At the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, are working with New Yorkers, law enforcement, the courts, and other City agencies to ensure that each part of New York City’s public safety system works well and works together so that every New Yorker is safe and treated fairly. Violent crime in New York City has been dropping since the mid-1990s and, as of 2015, is lower than the national average for big cities. In 2014, there were 328 homicides, the lowest number since at least 1963. Crime rates spiked in the 1980s and early 1990s as the crack epidemic hit the city. According to a 2015 ranking of 50 cities by The Economist, New York was the 10th overall safest major city in the world, as well as the 28th safest in personal safety. During the 1990s the New York City Police Department (NYPD) adopted CompStat, broken windows policing and other strategies in a major effort to reduce crime. The city's dramatic drop in crime has been attributed by criminologists to policing tactics, the end of the crack epidemic, and some have speculated more controversial ideas such as the legalization of abortion approximately 18 years previous and the decline of lead poisoning of children.