{"id":1089,"date":"2009-12-31T01:08:09","date_gmt":"2009-12-31T07:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/?p=1089"},"modified":"2009-12-31T01:08:09","modified_gmt":"2009-12-31T07:08:09","slug":"more-good-news-about-homicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/2009\/12\/31\/more-good-news-about-homicide\/","title":{"rendered":"more good news about homicide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Matt McKinney offers a good analysis of the declining twin cities homicide rate in this morning&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/local\/80314667.html\"><em>Strib<\/em><\/a><em> <\/em>. I plotted the data for Minneapolis (purple, population = 390,000) and St. Paul (gold, population = 287,000) in the chart below. With two days left on the calendar, we&#8217;ve had 19 homicides in Minneapolis and 14 in St. Paul, a big drop since the murderapolis days of the mid-1990s. Since the population in both cities has grown a bit since 1980, these drops would look even steeper if I plotted them as rates.<a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_0JuSECuIrUI\/SzxEr0mWf2I\/AAAAAAAAC-s\/H1MQmYxSdnQ\/s1600-h\/homicides2.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421283571091799906\" style=\"text-align: center;margin: 0px auto 10px;width: 400px;height: 274px;cursor: hand\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_0JuSECuIrUI\/SzxEr0mWf2I\/AAAAAAAAC-s\/H1MQmYxSdnQ\/s400\/homicides2.gif\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nThe Minneapolis numbers are especially low &#8212; by my count, almost two standard deviations (<em>sd = <\/em>16.2) below the 28-year mean of 50.4 homicides per year. The St. Paul numbers are about one standard deviation (<em>sd = <\/em>5.8) below the 26-year mean of 20.0. Based on recent trends, I&#8217;d be (very pleasantly) surprised if the Minneapolis number dropped below 20 again next year.<\/p>\n<p>In the twin cities, as elsewhere, homicide victims and offenders are disproportionately young African American men, so shifts in the homicide rate among this age\/race\/gender group sometimes have a big effect on the aggregate numbers. If I were to do any analysis of these data series, I&#8217;d start with a local breakout by age and weapon use.<\/p>\n<p>The national gun homicide rate, shown in the <a href=\"http:\/\/bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov\/content\/homicide\/weapons.cfm\">bureau of justice statistics<\/a> figures below, has fluctuated far more than the non-gun rate over the past 30 years &#8212; especially among young males. I&#8217;d guess (and it is <em>only<\/em> a guess) that gun homicides among males aged 14-24 must have declined to near zero in Minneapolis this year. I can speculate about why this would be the case (e.g., aggressive enforcement of weapons offenses and corresponding shifts in the social acceptability of gun-carrying by young men), but I&#8217;d best check the data before piling one speculation atop another speculation.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_0JuSECuIrUI\/SzxHAvCfLQI\/AAAAAAAAC-0\/QWG6oxVG2cU\/s1600-h\/guns.png\"><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_0JuSECuIrUI\/SzxHAvCfLQI\/AAAAAAAAC-0\/QWG6oxVG2cU\/s1600-h\/guns.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421286129399704834\" style=\"text-align: center;margin: 0px auto 10px;width: 400px;height: 334px;cursor: hand\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_0JuSECuIrUI\/SzxHAvCfLQI\/AAAAAAAAC-0\/QWG6oxVG2cU\/s400\/guns.png\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matt McKinney offers a good analysis of the declining twin cities homicide rate in this morning&#8217;s Strib . I plotted the data for Minneapolis (purple, population = 390,000) and St. Paul (gold, population = 287,000) in the chart below. With two days left on the calendar, we&#8217;ve had 19 homicides in Minneapolis and 14 in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1090,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089\/revisions\/1090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}