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A 1988 paper, Test of a Field Model of Consciousness and Social Change: The Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi Program and Decreased Urban Crime describes some studies of data from the '70s and found that the more people who attended group practice of Transcendental Meditation, the more violent crime was decreased in the District of Columbia. They describe this as evidence of a causal relationship.

A 1999 paper, Effects of Group Practice of the Transcendental Meditation Program on Preventing Violent Crime in Washington, D.C.: Results of the National Demonstration Project, June--July 1993 describe a prospective experiment in 1993, where 4,000 people participated in Transcendental Meditation, and they found a 15.6% reduction in violent crimes in D.C., after controlling for temperature.

The claim that personal meditation is capable of "increasing coherence and reducing stress in the collective consciousness of the District" and thus decrease crime is extraordinary and incredibly important, if true.

Is there a causal relationship between Transcendental Meditation and lower violent crime rates across a city (beyond the participants themselves)?

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    The described reduction effect does not actually correlate to the time frame of the demonstration, which makes me question its relevance. The article describes the effect as continuing after the meditation stopped, which seems to be assuming the thing you're trying to prove.
    – barbecue
    Aug 29, 2018 at 18:48
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    Welcome to Skeptics! The wording of this question is too vague to have much meaning ("agitate", "environment", "calming influence" - these are all being used in unusual and blurry ways.) I am going to try to reword this to make it into a specific claim.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Aug 30, 2018 at 13:21
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    @barbecue: The papers claim there is a correlation, so your statement needs references. If the "coherence" is increased and the "stress in the collective consciousness" is reduced, one might expect the effect to last for longer. We need to be generous to the claim to ensure any debunking is fair and robust.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Aug 30, 2018 at 13:37
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    You may want to directly quote some of the data/results from those articles since the average person will have trouble accessing them. The first article requires a free-but-limited account to access, and the second seems to be fully behind a paywall.
    – Giter
    Aug 30, 2018 at 13:45

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