Violent crime is down in Dallas, and here’s why
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A combination of policing and violence reduction strategies are at work.
After several years of rising violence in our streets, there is strong reason to believe Dallas is now on a safer path.
In fact, Dallas is bucking state and national trends. While homicides went down by 13% in Dallas in 2021 compared with 2020, we saw them rise in Austin by 86%, in San Antonio by 23%, and in Houston by 17%. That data is based on Preliminary Uniform Crime Reports compiled by each city police department for 2021, compared with final and published FBI Uniform Crime Reports for 2020.
Police Chief Eddie García and the men and women of the Dallas Police Department deserve significant credit for developing and executing the first phase of a violent crime reduction plan built on data and research.
It is also important to highlight and champion violence-reduction strategies in Dallas that go beyond traditional law enforcement. We are proud that Dallas has taken a layered, multifaceted approach to public safety that also emphasizes and invests in community-based solutions. And it is heartening to know that our decreases in violence have occurred at the same time we’ve seen meaningful decreases in arrests.
But now is not the time to declare that our mission is accomplished. It isn’t. When gun violence is present in a neighborhood, it becomes exponentially more difficult to create opportunities for people to thrive socially and economically. And violence still takes and forever alters more lives in our city than should be acceptable to any of us.
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Dallas College students who are evicted more likely to drop out, not return
CPAL’s study with Dallas College reveals how an eviction can have harmful and long-lasting impacts on young adults.
- Dallas College students who haven’t experienced an eviction earn a credential at about 7.5 times the rate of students who do have an eviction filing against them.
- Dallas College students who faced an eviction had a persistence rate 60% lower than the first-time students cohort; the eviction cohort also had a 50% lower retention rate compared to the first-time students cohort.
CPAL Partner Spotlight: Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center
What if real-time data could help stop evictions before they happen?
- In this CPAL Partner Spotlight, we highlight how the Dallas Eviction Advocacy Center (DEAC) is using eviction filing data from the Child Poverty Action Lab (CPAL) to execute a bold strategy: providing legal defense for every tenant, in every court, every day.
- With over 40,000 eviction filings each year in Dallas County, the stakes are high — and so is the potential for impact. CPAL’s real-time data allows DEAC to identify eviction filings as soon as they’re submitted, reach out to tenants proactively, and prepare legal defenses before they ever walk into court.
Yes, Dallas violent crime dropped in 2022, but the number of arrests is even more
CPAL analysis shows Dallas is getting safer while the number of arrests continues to fall.
- Reducing those arrests that do not make us safer is important: 80%+ of arrests are for nonviolent offenses and 75% of the jail population is pretrial, impacting thousands of children and families.
- A recent CPAL study showed Dallas County children are more likely than kids in any other Texas county to have parents in prison. At least 80,000 of them had a parent behind bars, according to the report.