25 years ago, Jersey City was the poorest city in America, so, yes, there was a lot of crime (as there was in cities nationwide in that era). Then after 9/11, a lot of Wall Street firms that had been in or near the WTC moved here, so it was the poorest city in America, plus Wall Street. In the intervening decades, the middle (and in particular the upper middle) has filled in quite a bit.

And the result has been a precipitous drop in crime. The overall crime rate is about half what it was in 2005, and there were 12 murders in the whole city in 2022, which might be the lowest number in the entire history of Jersey City.