What do the top cities have in common? All have received law enforcement assistance from the National Guard or ICE or both. Some resisting in spite of the results. What do cities absent from the top ten list have in common? Successful resistance to the National Guard and ICE.
Its truly great to read about some good news, especially about statistics that are so important. I wish that we all took more time to see that, even when we have plenty of issues to argue about, that there are still reasons to be positive.
Writing for The Atlantic recently, Jeff Asher predicted that, “The United States may be experiencing one of the largest annual percent changes in murder ever recorded, according to my preliminary data.”
That’s a bold statement and will undoubtedly be used to evaluate the effectiveness of criminal justice policies around the country. In some cases, crime statistics will be weaponized for partisan attack.
For example, Los Angeles Times columnist Anita Chabria recently wrote that homicides were highest in what she calls “Trump’s California”. She contrasts murder rates in Merced, Tulare, and in particular Kern County, which according to her analysis voted 54 percent for Donald Trump and 64 percent for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy – with lower murder rates in Los Angeles and San Francisco, which she labels as “dark blue”. Her column leads readers to conclude that progressive policies are far more effective at preventing homicides.
But the devil is in the details.
Asher correctly notes that national crime statistics, as they have been compiled by the FBI, are not accurate. So, he tracked homicide (and other crimes) in select US cities that publish monthly crime statistics. These statistics are aggregated in what he calls his Year To Date Murder Tracker – and the numbers are looking good.
Using his list of 114 US cities, the year to date (YTD) murders are down from 5,987 in 2022 to 5,235 – or a drop of 12.6 percent.
In 2022 in California, homicides dropped 6.6 percent. Yet, at the same time, violent crimes increased 6.2 percent.
Why the disparity?
Crimes that are potentially murderous acts are lumped together in the crime statistics as violent crimes known as “aggravated assaults.” They can include assaults with a deadly weapon (ADW), attempted murder, and assaults with great bodily injury (GBI), and include all types of weapons – not just firearms.
There is a myriad of factors that influence whether a violent crime becomes a homicide. Among them are the seriousness of the injury, the use of weapons, the age and relative health of the victim, the availability of medical care – in particular, speedy trauma care – and even the time of day (or night) that the victim is injured. Midnight to 6am is when one is least likely to survive.
Consequently, when Asher concludes that, in 2023, the United States was in the midst of the highest drop in homicides ever recorded – it may have less to do with murder than other factors.
2002
Medical advances mask epidemic of violence by cutting murder rate
Murder rates would be up to five times higher than they are but for medical developments over the past 40 years.
According to new research, doctors are saving the lives of thousands of victims of attack who four decades ago would have died and become murder statistics.
Although the study is based on US data, the researchers say the principle applies to other countries too: “There is reason to expect a similar trend overall in Britain,” said Dr Anthony Harris, the lead author of the study.
In the research he and a team from Massachusetts University and Harvard Medical School found that technological developments had helped to significantly depress today's murder rates, converting homicides into aggravated assaults.
“Without this technology, we estimate there would be no less than 50 000 and as many as 115000 homicides annually instead of an actual 15 000 to 20000,” they say in a report of the study in the journal Homicide Studies (2002;6:128-66).
The team looked at data going back to 1960 on murder, manslaughter, assault, and other crimes. It merged these data with health statistics and information on county level medical resources and facilities, including trauma centres, population, and geographic size. The researchers then worked out a lethality score based on the ratio of murders to murders and aggravated assaults.
They found that while the murder rate had changed little from a 1931 baseline figure, assaults had increased. The aggravated assault rate was, by 1997, almost 750% higher than the baseline figure.
The team also described the dramatic overall decrease in trauma mortality in the second half of the 20th century.
The period of greatest change came between 1972 and 1977, on the heels of the US involvement in the Vietnam war, which triggered big advances in trauma care.
The team found that at county level significant drops in lethality of assault were linked to availability of high levels of care. The impact of a county simply having a hospital also had a significant impact, reducing lethality ratios by as much as 24% a year.
One of your best! Good to step back and realize there is indeed good news and positive trends.
RE: Murder rates falling
What do the top cities have in common? All have received law enforcement assistance from the National Guard or ICE or both. Some resisting in spite of the results. What do cities absent from the top ten list have in common? Successful resistance to the National Guard and ICE.
Thanks for the good news, but we need a dose of reality"
Middle-class families can't afford high grocery and utility bills.
Gas prices are through the roof.
43 million Americans are carrying 1.8 trillion in student loan debt.
There are increasing delinquencies and repossessions related to 1.16 trillion in auto loans.
Americans are carrying 1.25 trillion in credit card debt at interest rates pushing 20%.
The University of Michigan consumer index is at an all-time low.
Labor's share of economic output has hit an all-time low, while the profit share is at a near record high.
Looking ahead, this does not bode well for the American economy.
Beryl Rosenstein
Pikesville, MD
Its truly great to read about some good news, especially about statistics that are so important. I wish that we all took more time to see that, even when we have plenty of issues to argue about, that there are still reasons to be positive.
2023:
In 2022 in California, homicides dropped 6.6 percent. Yet, at the same time, violent crimes increased 6.2 percent. Why the disparity?
https://www.pacificresearch.org/murders-are-up-were-just-dying-less/
Writing for The Atlantic recently, Jeff Asher predicted that, “The United States may be experiencing one of the largest annual percent changes in murder ever recorded, according to my preliminary data.”
That’s a bold statement and will undoubtedly be used to evaluate the effectiveness of criminal justice policies around the country. In some cases, crime statistics will be weaponized for partisan attack.
For example, Los Angeles Times columnist Anita Chabria recently wrote that homicides were highest in what she calls “Trump’s California”. She contrasts murder rates in Merced, Tulare, and in particular Kern County, which according to her analysis voted 54 percent for Donald Trump and 64 percent for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy – with lower murder rates in Los Angeles and San Francisco, which she labels as “dark blue”. Her column leads readers to conclude that progressive policies are far more effective at preventing homicides.
But the devil is in the details.
Asher correctly notes that national crime statistics, as they have been compiled by the FBI, are not accurate. So, he tracked homicide (and other crimes) in select US cities that publish monthly crime statistics. These statistics are aggregated in what he calls his Year To Date Murder Tracker – and the numbers are looking good.
Using his list of 114 US cities, the year to date (YTD) murders are down from 5,987 in 2022 to 5,235 – or a drop of 12.6 percent.
In 2022 in California, homicides dropped 6.6 percent. Yet, at the same time, violent crimes increased 6.2 percent.
Why the disparity?
Crimes that are potentially murderous acts are lumped together in the crime statistics as violent crimes known as “aggravated assaults.” They can include assaults with a deadly weapon (ADW), attempted murder, and assaults with great bodily injury (GBI), and include all types of weapons – not just firearms.
There is a myriad of factors that influence whether a violent crime becomes a homicide. Among them are the seriousness of the injury, the use of weapons, the age and relative health of the victim, the availability of medical care – in particular, speedy trauma care – and even the time of day (or night) that the victim is injured. Midnight to 6am is when one is least likely to survive.
Consequently, when Asher concludes that, in 2023, the United States was in the midst of the highest drop in homicides ever recorded – it may have less to do with murder than other factors.
2002
Medical advances mask epidemic of violence by cutting murder rate
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1124155/
Murder rates would be up to five times higher than they are but for medical developments over the past 40 years.
According to new research, doctors are saving the lives of thousands of victims of attack who four decades ago would have died and become murder statistics.
Although the study is based on US data, the researchers say the principle applies to other countries too: “There is reason to expect a similar trend overall in Britain,” said Dr Anthony Harris, the lead author of the study.
In the research he and a team from Massachusetts University and Harvard Medical School found that technological developments had helped to significantly depress today's murder rates, converting homicides into aggravated assaults.
“Without this technology, we estimate there would be no less than 50 000 and as many as 115000 homicides annually instead of an actual 15 000 to 20000,” they say in a report of the study in the journal Homicide Studies (2002;6:128-66).
The team looked at data going back to 1960 on murder, manslaughter, assault, and other crimes. It merged these data with health statistics and information on county level medical resources and facilities, including trauma centres, population, and geographic size. The researchers then worked out a lethality score based on the ratio of murders to murders and aggravated assaults.
They found that while the murder rate had changed little from a 1931 baseline figure, assaults had increased. The aggravated assault rate was, by 1997, almost 750% higher than the baseline figure.
The team also described the dramatic overall decrease in trauma mortality in the second half of the 20th century.
The period of greatest change came between 1972 and 1977, on the heels of the US involvement in the Vietnam war, which triggered big advances in trauma care.
The team found that at county level significant drops in lethality of assault were linked to availability of high levels of care. The impact of a county simply having a hospital also had a significant impact, reducing lethality ratios by as much as 24% a year.