Trump’s cuts to intervention programs could increase violent crime, experts say

The justice department justified the cuts by stating that it was instead focusing on ‘prosecuting criminals’, but some experts argue that intervention programs are more effective at reducing violence. Photograph: Victor J Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images View image in fullscreen The justice department justified the cuts by stating that it was instead focusing on ‘prosecuting criminals’, but some experts argue that intervention programs are more effective at reducing violence. Photograph: Victor J Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images Trump’s cuts to intervention programs could increase violent crime, experts say Community programs are more effective at reducing violence than simply making arrests, advocates say H omicides in the US have fallen dramatically in recent years after a spike during the Covid-19 pandemic, but now some advocates for community violence intervention programs worry federal funding cuts by the Trump administration will reverse that trend. In April 2025, more than $800m in grants was cut from the Department of Justice’s office of justice programs aimed at preventing and responding to gun violence, among other causes. While the justice department justified the cuts by stating that it was instead focusing on “prosecuting criminals”, some experts argue that intervention programs are more effective at reducing violence than simply making arrests. “We saw historic reductions in homicides, which means that countless fewer families had to bury loved ones,” said Shani Buggs, an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, who studies community violence prevention. “It is beyond disheartening that rather than investing and [studying] what worked and pouring into what worked, we are doing the opposite.” In 2020, when the pandemic started, the US saw its murder rate increase 30% over 2019, the largest-ever recorded increase, according to the FBI. Other violent offenses also increased. That happened because of the Covid lockdown, experts say. “The clearest explanation for why homicide and violence increased so rapidly across the entire country during the pandemic is that large numbers of young men and teen boys in high poverty, higher violence neighborhoods were pushed out of work and out of school,” said Rhett Morris, who co-authored a Brookings Institution report on homicides during the pandemic. Violent crime started to ease during the second half of the Biden administration and the downward trend has continued since Trump took office. In 2025, there were 25% fewer homicides in the US than in 2019, according to a report from the Council on Criminal Justice, a non-partisan thinktank. The New York police department also reported that the city saw its fewest murders in recorded history during the first four months of this year. Even though the recent crime drop started under Biden, the Trump administration has portrayed the progress as something that began once he took office and linked it to his deployment of national guard troo