The Wall Street Journal has published a surprisingly candid article about the nationwide surge in homicides. This surge is isolated to small areas. We can predict where the most homicides are going to be based on demographics.
This website recently explored crime data by the Department of Justice for 2019 and found that a staggering 55.9% of known murder suspects that year were Black. This percentage has been rising for the past decade. However, many majority Black cities have dismal homicide clearance rates. Circumstantial evidence contained in the data suggests that Black perpetrators are committing close to 60% of all murders in the USA, even though they only make up about 14% of the population.
While Latinos commit murders at about 3 times the rate that Whites do, Blacks commit murder at roughly three times the rate of Latinos.
A murder wave in U.S. cities that started last year is carrying forward into 2021, and a growing body of research shows a pattern behind the rise: It has been concentrated in relatively few poor neighborhoods, typically Black and Hispanic, with persistent histories of violence.
As elected officials and communities search for solutions, recognizing this geographical reality is essential, say social scientists and police officials who have studied the murder wave. Police and other city authorities will need to focus their efforts on a few areas that have missed out on the urban renaissance of the past two decades as their middle-class residents have fled. Controversy over policing has complicated matters after the conviction of Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, for the killing of George Floyd, a Black man. “The problem isn’t going away,” said Jens Ludwig, director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab. “People in my world are very nervous about the summer of 2021.”
