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aidansean OP t1_is84qjd wrote

This post is a variation of the post that u/academiaadvice made, with some tweaks.

I added the "baseline" rate. This is the mean +/- one standard deviation in the period January 1999 to April 2020. This excludes September 2001, which is considered an outlier. The choice to exclude the period after April 2020 is based on the comments left on the other post.

The values also take the population of the USA and days per month into account. The y-axis is given in units per day per 100,000,000 people. As a rough guide, you can multiply the values by about 100 to get the number of homicide deaths for a given month. (For example, in September 2001, there were approximately 5,000 homicides.)

Sources: Homicide: https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/saved/D76/D309F401 Population: https://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table/by-month

Tools: Python (pandas+matplotlib)

Thanks to u/academiaadvice for the inspiration and data source!

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DamnImBeautiful t1_is852ht wrote

uhhh, Im pretty sure mean +- std should not be constant

−3

Simple-Inevitable123 t1_is856bp wrote

Why was homicide that high in 2001? Like....people went that crazy after 9/11 or what?

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coldgator t1_is89w0e wrote

Am I stupid for not understanding the 2021ish spike?

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aidansean OP t1_is8ae8l wrote

Replying to coldgator (#98,535)

I don't think anyone fully understands it. Comments on the other post suggested effects of the pandemic and George Floyd protests. It will be interesting to see what data the CDC publish in the future to see if it returns to the previous values.

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2XX2010 t1_is8b855 wrote

Look at the Obama years shining.

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batatatchugen t1_is8eeb1 wrote

Is that spike around September? More specific on the 11th?

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MrEZW t1_is8euaa wrote

2008-2016 shows a dip below the mean, those are also the years Obama was president.

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SirJelly t1_is8hry2 wrote

Replying to aidansean (#98,263)

Its worth noting this data starts right at the start of a relatively stable crime period. It hasn't always been this way. one article with a graph.

There are a few points of interest recently.

  1. The 9-11 spike was a few thousand murders on the same day. easy explanation.
  2. the dip in the 2008-2015 years.
  3. the spike in the COVID era.

Studying violent crime in a global context reveals nearly all aspects of societal health matter in determining crime rates averaged over large areas. Governance, education access, inequality, economic conditions, cultural inertia, all of it matters. The emerging strategies for combating crime however are hyper localized, individual streets and blocks which have a particularly poor mix of attributes. brookings has decent work on this subject, the linked article starts off by dismissing several of the bad-faith arguments that popped up quickly in the other thread.

While national murder rates remain stable, those murders shifted dramatically from some cities to others, so explaining why the national rate went up or down is really an exercise in summing up studies in many of the largest cities.

It is not particularly surprising through this lens why crime rates spiked during COVID. Small businesses nestled throughout distressed communities went under during the shutdowns. Once lively blocks, storefronts, even single street corners turned from happy places to desolate in an instant. Social connections, a critical violence mitigator, was effectively forbidden.

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stlcowboy8888 t1_is8i1rd wrote

Replying to aidansean (#98,568)

A lot of people understand it. There were criminals not being put in jail/ being released during this time because of the covid outbreak., that were in due to overcrowding. I'm sure that had somthing to due to it.. and overall stressful cirmsanstaces for everyone else no

−8

Bubba479 t1_is8rxk8 wrote

Uh, atrial flutter with one R wave? Am i right?

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WhileNotLurking t1_is8yr82 wrote

Replying to coldgator (#98,535)

Have you ever been stuck hold up with people you hate in close quarters.

Yeah. Some of the people murdered their housemates / families.

Another group went back out into the world as things reopened… and killed other people because they had so much built up anger. They also lost all social norms in isolation. Which likely lead to more things that would have ended up as a “fuck you buddie” and instead ended in homicide.

If you have been out in places or driving post COVID you can see how aggressive a subset of people have become.

0

Critical_Session482 t1_is90w6k wrote

Do these figures count suicides as homicides?

These numbers do not correspond with the numbers you get from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports for murder and non-negligent homicides.

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Macrophage87 t1_isadkd9 wrote

Replying to What_Is_The_Meaning (#98,820)

Not in the south. Most prisons in the south don't have air conditionings. That makes working in the prison pig farm a choice position as those places have air conditioning, because it would be inhumane not to.

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FailOsprey t1_isash70 wrote

Replying to SirJelly (#98,960)

>It is not particularly surprising through this lens why crime rates spiked during COVID. Small businesses nestled throughout distressed communities went under during the shutdowns. Once lively blocks, storefronts, even single street corners turned from happy places to desolate in an instant. Social connections, a critical violence mitigator, was effectively forbidden.

...I feel as though the increase in murders during covid is better explained by all the people out of work and school and the fact that a ton of stimulus money was flowing through the drug trade (every drug addict got access to a few thousand dollars that immediately went to drugs). Alot of social avenues we're shut down, but people were still socializing; bars stayed open where I'm at, and people spent alot of time getting drunk with each other at home.

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Procrasturbating t1_isd3wcw wrote

Replying to Sup3rmurs3 (#102,956)

Domestic abuse was through the roof during lockdown. People went legitimately crazy the world over. Isolation, paranoia, job losses.. hard to put that on Biden. The next year or two will be more accurate in reflecting policy changes.

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FailOsprey t1_isf30l4 wrote

Replying to BSP9000 (#105,270)

...one can argue that the George Floyd protests were the result of people not working, which was made possible through a combination of unemployment, government stimulus, and shutdown of schools and workplaces.

It seems that the protests are correlated with the increase in the homicide rate, but not it's cause.

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Procrasturbating t1_isfkg3b wrote

Replying to Sup3rmurs3 (#108,410)

If the numbers are to be believed many more lives were saved by those actions. Even more could have been if we had acted sooner. They preferred mass death of the elderly and middle-aged over personal sacrifice IMHO. I think that makes them weak willed and weak minded. Those are the ones that knew what was up. I can forgive the ones that were manipulated into believing that there was nothing we could do or that it was overblown. They don't question what they are told by their guys and are generally kinda just trying to live life.

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Procrasturbating t1_ishba3f wrote

Replying to Himbo69r (#112,926)

Yeah, they are among the ones that chose profit over people. Government is supposed to regulate business for a reason and not the other way around. PURE capitalism without healthy government regulation is evil. Regulatory capture is basically the same thing with extra steps.

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sukkibds t1_isliiq2 wrote

Replying to FailOsprey (#110,136)

> It seems that the protests are correlated with the increase in the homicide rate, but not it's cause.

No the protests themselves aren't the cause. The argument is that the subsequent pulling back/ lack of policing following the protests is the proximate cause. Of course, all those things you mentioned were big factors in causing the intensity and scale of the protests so it's really a question of where you draw the line.

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BSP9000 t1_isq2drs wrote

Replying to FailOsprey (#110,136)

Except that the pandemic was worldwide. Pretty much every country saw unemployment and school shutdowns. Most of the developed world had government stimulus.

Only the United States saw a 30% increase in murder. And that was mostly in black communities in the US.

So it was an effect of depolicing black communities, not an effect of unemployment.

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BSP9000 t1_isq2nez wrote

Replying to coldgator (#106,705)

Oh, it's highly logical. The conclusion is just an uncomfortable reality that few people want to talk about. So, papers like the NYT or WaPo give vague statements blaming guns or domestic violence or whatever.

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