Whether the results can be sustained in St. Louis, and replicated in cities nationwide, is a subject of intense interest among criminologists and others in the trenches of crime-fighting. Mayors are increasingly staking their careers on getting it right: Eric Adams won election in New York on a pledge to cut violent crime, while Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot, who faces reelection next February, has said this is “a make-or-break year” for halting the city’s rise in homicides, which exceeded 800 in 2021.
