SC murders rose, other crimes fell: 2021 was an unusual year, SLED stats show
Something unexpected happened to crime in South Carolina. While the rate of most major crimes declined last year, the Palmetto State’s murder rate has risen to a near 30-year high.
From 2020 to 2021, South Carolina’s murder rate grew by close to 1%, putting it at the highest level since 1991.
High rates of murder have historically haunted South Carolina, which has the sixth highest homicide rate in the country, according to the CDC. But a five year upswing in murders recorded by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is an outlier amongst declining rates of crimes from robbery, assault and sexual battery to arson and burglary.
The 2021 crime stats from SLED, released earlier this month, show that on the whole South Carolina continues to grow safer even as the state’s population grows.
“It’s out of the ordinary in a historical context because we tend to see violent crime rates and homicide rates trend in the same direction,” said Ashley Mancik, assistant professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina.
Law enforcement and policymakers have struggled to reconcile these divergent trends as crime becomes a growing preoccupation across the country. In South Carolina, law enforcement officials have blamed the growth in homicides on easy access to guns and interpersonal conflict turbocharged by social media.
The numbers are compiled from 237 of South Carolina’s law enforcement agencies. They measure the number of reported instances of eight so-called “index offenses,” including murder, assault, robbery, burglary, larceny and sexual battery, which provide a broad snapshot of crime in a given jurisdiction.
First, the good news
SLED’s data shows that between 2020 and 2021, South Carolina’s violent crime rate decreased by 5.1%. Broken down, that meant fewer instances of sexual battery, robbery and aggravated assault per 10,000 residents of South Carolina. This decline was particularly driven by a nearly 20% reduction in the rate of robberies.
“It lines up with what we’re seeing other places nationally,” Mancik said.
But she expressed surprise that the murder rate appeared to be untethered from crimes like aggravated assault, which tend to include incidents like nonfatal shootings that can lead to homicides.
The property crime rate decreased 9%, marking the tenth consecutive yearly decrease, according to SLED. On the whole, property crime has decreased 34.2% over the past decade. The rate of the four property crime index offenses — burglary, arson, larceny, and motor vehicle crimes — declined across the board.
“Education has done a lot,” said Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott. “People are engaged more in crime prevention and they are more aware of how to protect themselves.”
Burglaries and robberies both saw double digit decreases in South Carolina. Robberies fell by 19.6% statewide while burglaries continued their own ten year decline, falling by 14.9%.
Guns drive murders
Guns are the leading and growing cause of murders in South Carolina.
In 2003, SLED listed firearms as the weapon in 66% of the state’s murders. By last year, that number had ballooned to 86%. SLED’s data suggests that weapons may be becoming a more regular part of crime. Violations of weapons laws, overwhelmingly related to firearms, have nearly doubled in the past ten years.
The problem, according to many, is easy access to stolen guns. At a Columbia City Council meeting in July, Mayor Daniel Rickenmann pointed out said that 70% of the guns recovered by the Columbia Police Department are stolen.
Columbia had the third-highest rate of gun thefts among U.S. cities in 2020, according to data from Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that advocates for gun reform.
“I can’t speak for the rest of the state, but here in the Midlands we’ll see 1,600 to 1,800 guns recovered in a calendar year,” Columbia Police Chief William “Skip” Holbrook said. He estimated that one-third of guns recovered were stolen from cars, some of which were just left unlocked.
The consequences of this trend can be seen in the Midlands. All 32 murders recorded by the Richland County Sheriff’s Department in 2021 were caused by a firearm, according to a department spokesperson. While murders in the city of Columbia have largely remained flat, there has been a “significant” rise in shootings.
Youth violence
Almost 40% of all murders recorded by SLED in 2021 were committed by offenders aged between 18 and 24.
While there is no one driver for this trend, community leaders and law enforcement officials described a gun culture among some teens that is driven by both bravado and fear.
Some communities leaders argue that guns getting into the hands of young people has created a vicious arms race.
Today, it’s not uncommon for a young person whose is being bullied or involved in conflict at school or in their neighborhood to look for a way to arm themselves, said Perry Bradley, who runs Building Better Communities, a Columbia-based anti-violence nonprofit.
“They’re scared,” said Bradley, who explained that some young people he’s worked with described their thinking as, “when I hear that somebody who doesn’t like me has a gun, I’m going to get a gun myself.”
For many of the young people his group works with, Bradley explained that social media magnifies many of the petty dramas that can lead to violence between teens.
“They’re having to deal with a bombardment of negative criticism from their peers,” Bradley said. And on the flip side, “if I know someone is recording (to post on social media) I’m going to do the most — I’m going to show you I’m a tough guy.”
But where it used to be fists, Sheriff Lott said, he’s seen a shift towards interpersonal conflicts ending in shootings.
“They think a gun gives them power and respect,” Lott said.
Why do Americans think crime is so high?
SLED’s data shows that across the board crime is far below its high water mark in the 1990s. Despite that, 78% think that crime is up nationwide while just over half of Americans think that crime has increased where they live, according to a poll taken by Gallup.
Media has played a role in driving the perception that violent crime, in particular, is on the rise. “Murders, shootings, homicides receive the most attention despite being the rarest crime types,” said Melcik.
This belief bled into In the recent midterms: 61% of registered voters said that violent crime was “very important” to their decision making, according to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
But a localized rise in certain kinds of crimes can create the impression that all crime is on the rise everywhere.
“It’s a perceptions issue,” Holbrook said. “We’re seeing crime be dispersed to places it has not historically been, to people who have not historically been touched.”
In 2022, the Columbia Police Department’s ShotSpotter system, a network of microphones that detect gunshots, recorded several hundred fewer gunshots in the 29203 ZIP code in North Columbia, where Holbrook said police have historically concentrated efforts to prevent shootings.
However, Holbrook said that his department has observed that shots fired incidents and nonfatal shootings have increased in neighborhoods where they were historically more rare.
Overall, though, Holbrook emphasized that while his department was concerned about nonfatal shootings they had seen homicides begin to decline this year, along with rape, robbery, and auto break-ins. In part, he credited fewer deaths on an evolution in law enforcement response, including officers being equipped with trauma kits that can help stop the bleeding from bullet wounds.
“What we’re doing is working,” Holbrook said.
This story was originally published November 27, 2022 at 6:00 AM.