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AFTER THE sweet tea was poured but before the tomato soup arrived, in the middle of a crowded restaurant, Bill White lifted his shirt-tail to reveal the rubberised grip of a .38 revolver. Everyones got one these days, he says. Over lunch, he and two other residents of Buckhead, the wealthy northern section of Atlanta, swap stories: packs of cars blocking intersections for illegal street races, would-be thieves casing houses, neighbours too frightened to leave their homes. Lenox Square, an upscale mall, installed metal detectors after a spate of shootings. Mr White is head of fundraising for the Buckhead Exploratory Committeea group of residents who have organised to push for Buckheads independence from Atlanta, driven, he explains, by three factors: crime, crime and crime.

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As of May 16th, murders were up by 59% in Atlanta compared with the same period in 2020. Rapes, aggravated assaults and thefts from and of cars are also well above levels in 2020. Nor is this just an Atlanta problem. Nationally, the spike in murders that began in 2020according to data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, homicides in American cities rose by 33% from 2019 to 2020shows no sign of abating. This is a problem first, of course, for the people living in the neighbourhoods where much of this violence takes place. But it also poses a problem for advocates of criminal-justice reform, who made great strides in the 2010s, when violent crime was falling. Convincing people to back lighter sentences and decrease their reliance on police when murders are rising may prove more difficult.

The reasons why murder rates are on the rise nationally remain unclear. In fact criminologists are still debating why crime fell in the 1990s and 2000s. The pandemic closed schools and other institutions, leaving young people unoccupied and anxious. Police who might otherwise have been deployed to high-crime neighbourhoods or investigative duty were assigned to respond to protests. Gun sales soared, and many faced financial hardships and other stresses. But violent-crime rates were rising, albeit more slowly than over the past 14 months, even before the covid-19 epidemic began, beginning in 2014.

Whatever the reason, homicides can be sticky, says John Pfaff of Fordham University in New York. A shooting in March can lead to a subsequent shooting in July, when retaliation comes up. In other words, even if the pandemic is partly responsible for the homicide spike, any post-pandemic decline may well be gradual.

As a result, crime now has a political salience that it has not had in years. A poll released last month showed crime was the second-most-important issue (behind covid-19) for Democrats in New York, who will choose a mayoral candidate in a primary on June 22nd. Eric Adams, a former police officer who has recently defended the use of stop-and-frisk tactics and made public safety the centre of his campaign, leads in some polls. Jenny Durkan, Seattles mayor, has faced criticism from both the right and left over her handling of the citys police-free autonomous zone and tactics used by police against protesters; she will not seek another term. Chesa Boudin, San Franciscos district attorney, faces a recall campaign, driven by the perception that he is too soft on crime. Crime has become central in the race to succeed Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlantas mayor, who also unexpectedly declined to seek a second term.

But before she leaves office, she plans to hire another 250 police officers. Other cities have taken a similar approach. Minneapolis, where a majority of the city council voted last year to defund and disband the police department, will spend $6.4m to hire new officers. While president of Baltimores city council, Brandon Scott championed a measure to cut the police departments budget by $22.4m; since taking office last December as mayor, he has proposed increasing it by $28m. Oakland will soon restore most of the $29m it cut from the police budget last year.

Such reversals testify more to the political than the budgetary costs of criminal-justice reform. But that does not mean reform is doomed, or that all voters will reject all reform-minded candidates. Last month Tishaura Jones was elected mayor of St Louis on a platform that included reducing reliance on police and closing one of the citys prisons. In a primary race on May 18th, Larry Krasner, Philadelphias crusading district attorney, trounced his police-union-backed opponent. On that same day, Ed Gainey, running on a reformist platform, defeated Bill Peduto in a primary election. He is poised to become Pittsburghs first black mayor.

Still, blame-mongering for violence is an effective cudgel for conservative state-level politicians to wield against liberal cities. Brian Kemp, Georgias Republican governor, is making Atlanta crime central to his re-election campaignthe better to win back Trump-hesitant Republicans in the citys suburbs. Florida has passed a law that lets the governor and his cabinet reverse any changes to cities police budgets that they deem unwise. Other states have proposed (and Texas has passed) measures cutting off funds to cities that slash police budgets. Unlike states, which the Tenth Amendment protects against federal overreach, cities are subsidiary creations of the state, and have no legal shield against these sorts of pre-emptive measures.

Reformers will have to change how they pitch their ideas. They cannot simply make a moral case. The impetus that led conservative and liberal states alike to reduce their prison populations in recent years was largely to save money. And, as Mr Pfaff notes, homicides are up nationwide, so if rising violent-crime rates indict reform in liberal cities, they must also indict the status quo in more conservative areas that have not pursued reform.

The rise in violence just makes everything related to these debates over how to reform policing and how to deal with police violence more difficult, explains Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at Princeton University. Theres a knee-jerk response because weve been so reliant on police and prisons as the institutions we turn to to deal with violence. Faced with a choice between more and less policing, people frightened of violent crime will rarely choose less.

In fact the choice is not binary. Police play a crucial role in fighting crime and, in the near term, cities may require a more robust police presence than some reformers would like. They do not play the only role, however. A wealth of evidence exists that other institutionsanti-violence non-profits, drug-treatment programmes, summer jobs for young peoplealso help. Politicians who want to reduce violent crime in their cities and states should remember that, just as activists should remember that reform is a harder sell when people do not feel safe. Because, since murders usually rise in the summer, when people are out in the streets until late, safety is unlikely to return soon.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Reality bites"

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Reality bites Liberals and crime spikes - The Economist