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Friday, January 11, 2013

Murder Rates: Dangerous Places

     When it comes to murder rates, the United States, when compared to the rest of the world, ranks in the middle. Countries that enjoy extremely low homicide rates include Finland, Belgium, United Kingdom, Portugal, and France. European nations with murder rates that exceed America's are: Moldova, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus. Other countries with exceptionally high rates of criminal homicide include: Russia, Greenland, Congo, Uganda, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Saint Lucia.

     In the United States, while national homicide rates are no longer in steep decline, they are not dramatically surging. There are cities and towns, however, where the rate of criminal homicide continues to fall significantly. New York City, for example, had 414 criminal homicides in 2012, a 17 percent drop from the previous year. There hasn't been fewer homicides in New York since 1963. (In 1992 there were over two thousand.)

     Last year, Miami, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis, cities with traditionally high rates of violent death, experienced declines in their murder rates. High murder towns that in 2012 remained dangerous places to live include Youngstown, Ohio, Camden, New Jersey, Chester, Pennsylvania, Stockton, California, and New Orleans.

     Big, crime-ridden cities that in 2012 saw their murder rates go up significantly include Los Angeles (294 homicides); Chicago (505); Cleveland (197); Philadelphia (331); and Oklahoma City (100).

     Detroit, a town of 706,000 with a history of violent crime dating back to the 1970s when the place was much more populated, and known as the Murder Capital of the United States, had the nation's highest per capita murder rate in 2012. New York City, a metropolis of eight million people, recorded 414 criminal homicides in 2012. There were, by comparison, 411 criminal homicides in the Motor City last year.  In Detroit, a miserable place to live, life continues to be cheap.  

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