Over the past two years, homicide increased 31 percent in America’s 52 largest cities. The cities range from little Richmond (220,000 people) to big NYC (8.5 million), from comparatively safe San Diego (homicide rate 3.5 per 100,000) to dangerous St. Louis and Baltimore (rates of 50+). Collectively 50.5 million people live in these 52 cities,…
Read more
Homicide is going up. It’s been going up for two years. And yet educated people still act shocked. I’m tired of refuting the homicide-increase deniers, but their arguments comes down to these collectively nonsensical points: A) homicide isn’t up in every city; B) homicide is up a whole lot in some cities; C) the increased…
Read more
Over at Nola Crime News, Jeff Asher tweeted this graphicjust now. Click on it; it moves! So while people are dying, I’m thinking about data presentation. There’s something about a moving line that may make one pay attention to dead people in a way that actual dead people don’t. Jeff’s graphic looks at Baltimore City…
Read more
Since I’ve been remiss at writing anything here recently, I’m going to link to a piece from Jim Glennon at Calibre Press: [Baltimore] Mayor Pugh then thanked federal officials for their assistance in the arrest of a man who murdered a three-year-old in 2014. … The Mayor’s expectation that the FBI can assist in the…
Read more
My previous post was supposed to be about this article by Frank Zimring from 42 years ago. But then I got caught up in the false data put out by the Brennan Center. A friend sent me this fascinating article (“A Tale of Two Cities,” Franklin Zimring, December 20, 1974, Wall Street Journal, p.14) because…
Read more
Homicide is up at a record setting two-year pace. But you wouldn’t know it from yet another press release by the Brennan Center. I think they time these to provide a “crime is not a problem” narrative to journalists, quite a few of whom are about to write year-end stories with the headline: “Oh shit,…
Read more
Ah, the ol’ Tale of Two Cities trope. But the diverging homicidal paths of Chicago and New York City are striking. The New York Post has a surprisingly good (especially for the NY Post) article on homicide in Chicago and NYC. These are raw numbers and not a rate. Chicago is roughly one-third the size…
Read more
If only we cared about homicide victims as much as we did about traffic fatalities, we might see an article in the paper about the biggest homicide spike in 50 years. Instead, there is a Times article about distracted driving: “Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps.” The rise in traffic deaths…
Read more
Somehow, between the Cubs winning the World Series, the presidential election, friends and family visiting, and, you know, my job, I missed this. The Brennan Center, which has been repeatedly telling us not to worry about rising homicide, predicts that this year’s homicide increase will be even bigger than last year’s increase (last year’s was…
Read more
The 2015 UCRis finally out. This means we have real numbers on last year. And the numbers are not good. Homicide is up 10.8 percent. That’s biggest increase in 45 years. Don’t downplay it. I’ll talk about that in my next post, but first the boring roundup: Firearms were used in 71.5 percent, which is…
Read more