MURDER, which grew rarer for 20 years, is on the rise again. But by how much? In 2015, the number of murders increased by 11% nationwide. During 2016, an escalation of gang violence in Chicago left 764 people dead in a city where 485 had been killed a year before. A dispute ensued over whether the Windy City was simply an isolated example or a barometer of a wider problem. National statistics for 2016 will not be released for eight months, but to get an early sense of the answer The Economist has gathered murder statistics for 2016 for the 50 cities with the most murders. These places contain 15% of the country’s population and around 36% of murder victims. Our numbers show that, in 2016, murders increased in 34 of the cities we tracked. Three cities experienced a spike in deaths sharper than the 58% suffered by Chicago. Since cities tend to reflect the country as a whole, this suggests that the murder rate is rising at its fastest pace since the early 1970s.
Today’s violence needs to be set in context. Despite the recent uptick, the murder rate in our 50 cities was lower in 2016 than it was in 2007, and for the...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2k4cQ1C
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