This tendency is called the Butterfield effect, which is named after Times reporter Fox Butterfield, who famously discovered the "paradox" of rising rates of incarceration alongside falling crime rates. Here's another recent example.
Today, Michael Luo set out to show how concealed carry laws lead to greater lawlessness because criminals can obtain concealed-carry permits. His evidence was that, of the 230,000 people in North Carolina with concealed-carry permits, a number of them committed crimes. As Robert Verbruggen puts it, Luo's numbers actually show the opposite:
North Carolina has a statewide murder rate of about 5 per 100,000. Even without counting manslaughter, that’s 25 murders committed per 100,000 North Carolinians every five years. There are about 230,000 valid concealed-carry permits in North Carolina, so by pure chance, you’d expect these folks to be responsible for nearly 60 murders over five years. And yet only ten of them committed murder or manslaughter. Instead of “rais[ing] questions,” the Times has demonstrated yet again that permit holders are more peaceful than the general population.