Incorrect.
Incorrect(??) Well I suppose it depends on who is doing the counting> i.e.
Is the US Really 3rd in Murders?
Posted on July 11, 2014 | in Stories | by bja
Us 3rd In Murders?
Is the US really 3rd in Murders?
This infographic is posted on Facebook and other social media quite often. Are the numbers put on this image true? There are a few problems with these numbers on this graphic. The first problem is it doesn’t make any specifications, so I’m just going to run the numbers as whole numbers, for the all countries in the world.I’ve updated this to include both raw numbers, and murder rates per capita. I haven’t made much change in numbers, since the UCR is still at 2012 as the most current numbers.
Raw Numbers
So lets look at the first number, stating that the US is 3rd in the world in murders. The US is actually 8th in the world in murders, at 14,827 in 2012. Ahead of it are [11]:
Brazil: 50,108
India: 43,355
Nigeria: 33,817
Mexico: 26,037
Democratic Republic of the Congo: 18,586
South Africa: 16,259
Venezuela: 16,072 The 2nd part states that removing those 4 cities, Chicago, Detroit, Washington DC, and New Orleans, would move the US from 3rd from top to 4th from last. Let’s look at the murder numbers from those 4 cities.Chicago: 532[1]
Detroit: 411[2]
New Orleans: 193 [3]
Washington DC: 88 [4]Total: 1224, or 8.2% of the total murders for the US in 2012.total-murders Now if you subtract that number from the total, it leaves you with 13,574 murders, and for the 2nd number, the 4th from bottom number, that is even further off than the first number. There are currently 218 nations in the world, after taking out those 4 cities from the total, the following cities are now above the US in total murders:Columbia: 14,670
Pakistan: 13,846
US: 13,574
China: 13,410So America moves down 2 places to number 10 in the world. 4th from the bottom of 218 would be 214, leaving this infographic 204 places off of it’s mark.Another thing to note is that the 4 cities seem to be cherry picked since they aren’t all even the top 4 highest murder cities in the country. Those honors go to:Chicago: 532 [1]
New York: 419 [5]
Detroit: 411 [2]
Philadelphia: 334 [7]Now these cities are listed before we even get to New Orleans on the list:
Los Angeles: 299 [6]
Baltimore: 219 [8]
Houston: 217 [9]Washington DC isn’t even on the list of the top 15 murder cities.note: for some reason Detroit is listed as having 411 homicides, with 25 of them being “justifiable” homicides and 386 being actual murders. I think the same may be true for Chicago, which the FBI statistics list as only 500 murders for 2012.
Per Capita
per-capita-murders
So in per-capita murder rate the US is 111th out of 218, not 3rd. With a murder rate of 4.7 per 100,000, that, depending on the exact population of 2012 that was used, was 14,758 total murders which is pretty close to the total murder number given.ChicagoPopulation 2.7 million
Murders 500
Murder Rate 18.5 / 100kDetroit
Population 698,000
Murders 386
Murder Rate 54.6 / 100kWashington DC
Population 685,000
Murders 88
Murder Rate 13.9 / 100kNew Orleans
Population 390,000
Murders 193
Murder Rate 53.2US population 314,000
US Murders minus 4 cities above 13591
US Murder rate minus above cities 4.3 / 100kSo, removing the murders from those above cities moves the US from 4.7 / 100k to 4.3 / 100k which changes it from 111th of 218 to 114th of 218.All of the above numbers come from the FBI Universal Crime Reporting tool [12]
References:
[1] Report: 532 Murdered in Chicago in 2012
[2] Detroit Tops 400 Homicides in 2012
[3] Murders in New Orleans were slightly fewer in 2012 than 2011
[4] DC 2012 Murder Rate ranked 8th among Nations Most Populated Cities
[5] FBI: Chicago Passes New York as Murder capital of US
[6] Crime Down in LA for the 10th Straight Year
[7] Homicides in Philadelphia
[8] Baltimore Ranked 6th in murder rate in 2012
[9] 2012 Houston Murder Numbers Up Slightly from 2011
[10] Table_4_Offenses_Reported_to_Law_Enforcement_by_State_by_City_2012
[11] GSH2013_Homicide_count_and_rate
[12] http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/Crime.cfm