ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The carjacking rate started to drop this year. This comes after a disturbing jump in prior years. NPR's law enforcement correspondent Martin Kaste reports on data from a sampling of cities.
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: Carjacking is car theft with violence or the threat of violence. It often involves a gun. Take this incident, caught on camera in Jackson, Mississippi, last May.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOT)
KASTE: A young male shoots in the air as he strides up to take over a parked car as the occupants scramble to get their kids out, and they yell at him to take the keys.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Yelling) The keys are there.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Yelling) The keys are in there. They're in there.
ERNESTO LOPEZ: While these are scary events and traumatic events, they generally do not end in any injury or death.
KASTE: That's Ernesto Lopez, researcher with the Council on Criminal Justice. He's been analyzing the recent data.
LOPEZ: About 70% of carjacking incidents involve no injury, and about 1 in 1,000 carjacking incidents involve a homicide.
KASTE: The FBI doesn't track carjacking as a distinct crime nationally, but some cities do. Lopez says numbers from 10 of those cities indicate that the average rate of carjacking nearly doubled between 2018 and 2023. This year, it appears to have finally peaked and started coming down again. But the rates are still well above what they were right before the pandemic. In San Francisco, Frank Noto, with the nonprofit Stop Crime SF, says crime is down in his city, but high-profile carjackings have had an outsized effect on people's sense of safety.
FRANK NOTO: If you have a video or a celebrated incident, that can remain in people's minds for a long time, and I think people are still recovering from some of that.
KASTE: Lopez says his analysis of carjacking has challenged some assumptions - for instance, that it's mostly done by teenagers. He says juveniles and adults commit the crime at about the same rate.
LOPEZ: So it's not a uniquely juvenile phenomenon when you compare to adults. But within the sphere of juvenile offending, it does appear to be pretty high.
KASTE: What's especially intriguing to Lopez is the fact that the carjacking numbers post-pandemic don't mirror other crime rates, such as robbery. He says there's something unique about the recent wave of carjacking. It could be driven by factors such as police presence, the layout of neighborhoods, even the availability of guns. He doesn't know, but he says it's worth closer study.
Martin Kaste, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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