State Overview
New Jersey operates under one of the most restrictive firearms-permitting regimes in the country — yet the state's biggest cities, Newark, Jersey City, Camden, and Trenton, still record homicide rates above the national average because of gang activity, drug trafficking along the I-95 and turnpike corridors, and decades of disinvestment in older urban cores. Camden's police department has operated under a federal consent decree for years, and the city has become a national case study in collaborative municipal reform. The state's most notorious serial homicide case remains the 2007 "Craigslist Killer" Philip Markoff, a Boston medical student who murdered a masseuse he met through the site. New Jersey also has a long history tied to organized-crime violence alongside the regional story of the American mob. FBI UCR data powers The Murder Channel's New Jersey coverage.