FYI: Statistics on U.S. Murder Rates

[MomatHWTK]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/murders-in-the-u-s-rose-in-2015-1474897888

Because I think it's topical.

[Laura Corin]

If you can't get by the WSJ pay wall:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/26/rate-murder-fbi-increase

[MomatHWTK]

Oh, sorry didn't realize there was a paywall. : (

[Guest]

Wouldn't surprise me in the least. There have been other correlated indicators that have been on the rise the last few years.

 

:(

[SKL]

They note the spike is concentrated in certain cities, and in other cities it's down.  So again, hopefully the solution is targeted to the problem.

[Guest]

Nonfatal slashings are up in NYC, while murder by gun is down.

[ktgrok]

Nonfatal slashings are up in NYC, while murder by gun is down.

 

Correct. The murder rate in NYC has continued down since the new mayor, and since ending stop and frisk. 

 

That the national rate is up is a separate statistic, and a recent one. 

[Guest]

Ceasing stop and frisk resulted in an increase in nonfatal shootings. Bratton's response was more walking the beat. With the terrorist activity, we havent heard much more on the subway slashings.

[Amira]

Correlation is not causation. The end of stop and frisk did not necessarily cause the increase in nonfatal shootings.

 

The end of stop and frisk most certainly did directly cause a decrease in civil rights violations, however.

[ktgrok]

Correlation is not causation. The end of stop and frisk did not necessarily cause the increase in nonfatal shootings.

 

The end of stop and frisk most certainly did directly cause a decrease in civil rights violations, however.

 

And for the record, it was definitely ruled unconstitutional, in 2013. No matter what certain people would like to believe. 

[Guest]

Correlation is not causation. The end of stop and frisk did not necessarily cause the increase in nonfatal shootings.

 

The end of stop and frisk most certainly did directly cause a decrease in civil rights violations, however.

Nor can the end of stop and frisk , or the new mayor, be solely attributed to causing less death by gun or knife or machete. Could be rise in heroin use, the change in police methodology, change in public school options, and many other things that affect emotions. Analysisis needed, as in the original freakonomics. But dont think because murder by gun is down that you can drop your guard.

[Amy in NH]

Correct. The murder rate in NYC has continued down since the new mayor, and since ending stop and frisk. 

 

That the national rate is up is a separate statistic, and a recent one. 

 

The national rate is up due largely to Chicago.

[MaeFlowers]

Correct. The murder rate in NYC has continued down since the new mayor, and since ending stop and frisk.

 

That the national rate is up is a separate statistic, and a recent one.

Being totally picky here but murder rates have been slowly rising since 2013. That said, they are still lower than pre-2013 and are slightly lower this year than last, year-to-date.

 

I'm not picking on you. I just had to look this up myself after the debate last night because of what others were saying.

[Crimson Wife]

I read the other day the majority of the homicide increases have been in Chicago, Baltimore, and D.C. So that would be due to some local factor(s). Chicago and Baltimore have had controversies over high-profile police shootings so the so-called "Ferguson effect" is quite likely a factor there.

[Anacharsis]

Saying anything useful about the U.S. as a whole is tricky -- it has more people than almost any empire in human history, and is up there even today as the 3rd most populous country in the world. It's also huge -- one country that is almost the size of the whole of Europe, including Eastern Europe. While tools exist that allow me to start to interpret things on that scale, it is very different to most of my day-to-day experiences. When someone says "15,696 murders" it sounds staggering -- I mean, in my day-to-day life, it is staggering. If someone dropped a bomb on the capital of South Dakota, obliterating it from the map, they'd still have a few murders left over -- so it seems like something to be alarmed about. Yet applying the same ratio of murders to population used for the U.S. to the South Dakota capital, a single person being murdered would be a greater quantity. For me at least, I try to focus on local rates, as they are easier to mesh with my day-to-day world.

Edited September 28, 2016 by Anacharsis

[Farrar]

Even in those cities, it's not a single picture. Those are the rates for 2015 - both DC and Baltimore are on track for lower numbers for 2016. In Chicago though, I understand the numbers may have risen slightly again for this year?

 

But if you look at DC, at least, it does not feel like we're in the middle of a crime wave - there was a good bit of talk about the rise in the murder rate last year, but a lot of it is confined to particular spots - not even always neighborhoods, but sometimes it's very block specific. And other measures of "good city" continue to get better - housing prices are up, new businesses are booming, new restaurants and bars, population is still rising in the city proper meaning people are moving in, there's still lots of new condo growth, city services and outreach and so forth still feel massively better to me as a longtime resident, schools are better... So a lot of the "our inner cities are scarier than ever and look how these statistics prove it" rhetoric just feels false from the actuality of the inner city. I mean, things are not always peachy here, but they're really pretty good.