The num­ber of mur­ders in New Jersey declined 24% in the first six months of 2009 com­pared to the same peri­od last year. Murders declined in 2008, the year after the state abol­ished the death penal­ty, mark­ing the first time since 1999 that New Jersey has seen a drop in mur­ders for two con­sec­u­tive years. Murders dropped 11% in 2007, the year fol­low­ing a state-imposed mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, which was insti­tut­ed in 2006. Governor Jon Corzine, who signed the bill abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty, was encour­aged by the sta­tis­tics and attrib­uted the decline to aggres­sive crime-fight­ing mea­sures: ​“The release of these crime report sta­tis­tics shows that we are win­ning impor­tant bat­tles in the war against vio­lent crim­i­nals and gangs,” said the Governor. ​“Thanks to the efforts of Attorney General Milgram and the New Jersey law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty, coun­ty task forces, police depart­ments, and part­ner agen­cies, more than 4,200 offend­ers have been arrest­ed for crimes includ­ing mur­der, assault with a firearm, armed rob­bery, and gun and drug traf­fick­ing. We know more work remains. Even one act of vio­lence against a New Jersey cit­i­zen is one too many.”

For the first six months of 2009, the over­all statewide homi­cide rate was down every month as com­pared to the same month in 2008. The broad­er cat­e­go­ry of vio­lent crime also decreased in the past two years. New Jersey was the first state to leg­isla­tive­ly abol­ish the death penal­ty since the 1960s. 

(Press Release, Gov. Corzine and Attorney General Anne Milgram, Aug. 3, 2009; DPIC research). See Deterrence and Recent Legislation.

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