« Rounding up some early commentary on the coming sentencing of Donald Trump | Main | Louisiana legislature passes law authorizing surgical castration as punishment for child sex crimes »
June 5, 2024
"Murder Is Still Down A Lot As Summer Approaches"
The title of this post is the title of Jeff Asher's latest substack entry, in which he provides a detailed accounting of the latest homicide data that he helps track so effectively through this AH Datalytics' murder data page. I recommend the lengthy substack posting in full, and here are snippets from the start and end:
[M]ultiple measures are pointing at a large decline in murder and gun violence occurring nationally in 2024. It’s late enough in the year now to believe such an outcome is likely to happen based on historical trends (though appreciating that an anomalous event could change things).
Murder is down around 18 to 19 percent (it’s -18.5 percent as I write on May 30) in more than 260 cities with available YTD data for 2024 compared to the same timeframe in 2023. Murder was down 20.5 percent in the sample of over 175 cities back then and it’s down 19.1 percent using those exact same cities now, so the level of decline has come down but just a bit in the last two months.
All of which means that murder is down a lot in 2024 relative to 2023. It’s still too early to say just how much murder will decline in 2024, but it’s late enough in the year with a large enough sample to say that murder will likely fall considerably and perhaps historically so this year after a large decline in 2023.
It’s too early to say with much confidence what the change in murder will be in 2024 for any given city (your city might be -10 percent now but see an increase by the end of the year), but a sample of this size is fairly good at predicting the direction and scope of a crime change nationally even at this point of the year. That said, of course something could happen to change the national trend, it would just be outside of the historical norm....
A preponderance of evidence points to a strong decline in gun violence and murder in the United States in 2024. This assessment will soon be supplemented by the FBI’s quarterly data covering January through March so it is not solely reliant on the FBI’s data. Rather than wondering whether murder will go up or down in 2024 (or if it's a NIBRS thing), the real analytic issues for the rest of the year are measuring the degree of the decline and seeing whether it can sustain at this level or begins to level off as the year marches on.
June 5, 2024 at 09:38 AM | Permalink
Comments
This is very good news!
Posted by: anon | Jun 5, 2024 12:00:13 PM
How does it compare with 2019?
Posted by: William Jockusch | Jun 5, 2024 4:10:09 PM
@William
I could not fine a YTD comparison for 2019 and 2024. However, there were fewer homicides than 2022, 2021, and 2020.
https://www.axios.com/2023/12/28/us-murder-violent-crime-rates-drop. If you read Asher's recent article on Substack, homicides are lower now than at this time in 2023. Therefore, it's possible that homicides in 2024 may be as low as homicides in 2019. Things are moving in the right direction.
Posted by: Anon | Jun 5, 2024 6:07:22 PM
Definitely the right direction, yes. To me, now that society has more-or-less returned to its pre-covid configuration, one would hope that homicides have done the same. That's why I asked about 2019.
Posted by: William Jockusch | Jun 5, 2024 9:22:57 PM
William: some cities are below 2019 homicides -- eg, Philly data shows 113 homicides so far in 2024 compared to 137 in 2019: https://www.phillypolice.com/crimestats/.
Boston is averaging less than a murder per month, after a historic low of only 37 murders in 2023 (and 38 in 2019).
In my own Ohio, it appears that that Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus are all on pace for fewer murders in 2024 than in 2019.
Posted by: Doug B | Jun 5, 2024 9:56:32 PM
Here in Lexington, Kentucky we saw a decline in homicides during 2023 to a record low of 24, down from 44 in 2022. As of this date [June 6] in 2023, Lexington had had 9 homicides, but as of June 6, 2024, we have had only 6 homicides, so the downward trend is continuing.
Posted by: Jim Gormley | Jun 6, 2024 9:35:06 AM
most curious: as the number of executions go down, so does the murder rate. Anyone have an explanation?
Posted by: anon | Jun 6, 2024 12:57:14 PM
We had a rare and unusual event here in Lexington this morning. In February, a 58-year-old man was convicted of murder for shooting and killing his own 23-year-old son in his front yard. There was a long history of the son, who was a long-term drug addict, hitting his father up for money and occasionally getting violent when his father wouldn't give him money to buy drugs. The father had just refused to give his son money and the son had threatened him. Although the son was unarmed at the time he was shot by the father in the driveway, the father testified that he thought his son had gone to his car (where his girlfriend was waiting) to get his pistol. At trial, the father admitted shooting and killing his son, but argued that he acted in self-defense. The jury convicted the father of murder and recommended a sentence of life in prison. The father was supposed to have been sentenced this morning. Before the hearing began, the Circuit Judge, Julie Goodman, called counsel to the bench to announce that she would not be sentencing the defendant but instead was granting the defendant's Motion for a New Trial. When the Judge announced from the bench that she was granting the Defendant a New Trial instead of sentencing him, there were gasps from the gallery, where members of the family were sitting. The main reason for granting the new trial are legally fascinating. Under Ky. law, when the defendant asserts self-defense, the burden of proof is on the Commonwealth (prosecution) to disprove the defense to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. However, in the Commonwealth's closing argument in this case, the Asst. Commonwealth's Attorney misstated the law and tried to shift the burden of proof to the defendant. She told the jury that the defendant had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he acted in self-defense. This was a direct misstatement of the applicable law, and would constitute palpable (plain) error, even if no contemporaneous objection was made. So, now the entire case will have to be retried. I don't think there is any chance the trial judge would be reversed on appeal, because the Commonwealth's statement of the law is so clearly wrong.
Posted by: Jim Gormley | Jun 6, 2024 3:07:01 PM
Anon,
Yes, the reasons people murder are so varied that one factor alone cannot change trends.
What we DO know is how all mammalian species react to negative stimulation (punishment). From rats pressing a button for a treat or shock to this. We also know that deterrence would be a bigger factor if it didn’t take 20 years.
Posted by: TarlsQtr | Jun 6, 2024 4:28:02 PM
