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Emily Gorski, Alex Moran, and Sammy Herman Final Pape Group 2: Homicid Our project focuses on homicide in the United States. Through our research, we discovered that homicide rates in the U.S. are highest in urban areas, and that minority groups are often targeted as victims. Homicide, or murder, is the unwarranted and deliberate killing of another person, and is an incredibly serious offense. While it remains a large problem in the United States today, homicide is something that needs to be combatted, and is a problem that we hope will someday cease to be a problem. source: table 322

This map shows the murder rates for each state in the year 2013, per 100,000 people. The state with the highest murder rate, Louisiana, is located in the Southeastern region of the U.S., and this comes as no surprise due to the fact that Louisiana is home to New Orleans, a large and densely populated city. However, the Midwest and Southwest areas also contain a high concentration of states with high murder rates. The Northeast and Northwest areas contain the states with the lowest murder rates, which we don’t find too

surprising due to the rural nature of many Northwest states. However, considering that the Northeast contains various urban areas, like New York City, we would have expected the murder rates there to be higher. One outlier on the map is Maryland, which has a murder rate between 5 to 8.6 murders per 100,000 people, while it is surrounded by states with murder rates between only 1.4 and 5. Another outlier is Texas, which has a significantly lower murder rate, 1.4 to 5, than its surrounding states, all of which have murder rates between 5 and 16. It is important for the audience to notice that while many would suspect a high total of murders occurs only in states with highly urban populations, that is not necessarily always the case. Murder is present all throughout the United States, whether the area is a city or mostly farmland, and homicide is a problem that needs to be addressed immediately.

In our

Murder Victims in the United States in 2013 by Identified Race

graph on murder victims Other; 2.51% Unknown; 1.20%

in the United States,

White; 45.19% Black; 51.10%

organized by race, in 2013, we found that it was interesting that the rate for

both black and white victims were relatively even. While black victims comprised 51% of the total number of victims, white victims comprised 45%. We also found it interesting that the white and black races were the

only majority figures in our data, while “other” races make up only 3% of murder victims. However, this graph did adhere to our thesis, that minority groups are often targeted in the U.S., as they made up over half of the number of victims.

Rate per 100,000 People

Murder Rates in the United States by Metropolitan Status in 2013 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0

Metropolitan Status

This graph depicts the murderrates of cities based on their metropolitan status. The metropolitan status of a city indicates how big or central of a city it is to its area. As the graph shows, the most murders happen in heavily metropolitan areas, like big cities and capital cities. This is not surprising, as heavily populated metropolitan areas are expected to have more people and, as a result, more crime. However, this could also be interesting, as one may expect non-metropolitan areas to have less crime control or police on duty, which may cause there to be more crime, even murder. It is also interesting that the murder rate of cities outside metropolitan areas, 3.7, and the murder rate of completely non-metropolitan areas, 3.4, is so close. One would expect such different areas to have a greater distance in statistics, and that maybe the cities outside

metropolitan areas and heavy metropolitan areas to be more closely related, though this is not the case. Although, the graph does show that the highest murder rates occur in metropolitan areas, as we formerly stated.

Murder Rate per 100,000 People

Murder Rates in the United States (1980-2013) 11.0 10.0 9.0

f(x) = − 0.19 x + 395.63 R² = 0.81

8.0 7.0 6.0 5.0 4.0 3.0 1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

Year

This graph shows a trend in murder rates in the U.S., and includes a prediction for the year 2015, though we do not have faith in this prediction. The value seems to follow the trendline, as it is decreasing. The R2 value is also .81395, making the model very strong. However, because we live in the year 2015, we know that murder rates in the U.S. sharply increased in 2015. This means that our prediction will not be accurate. This graph is central to our topic because it displays data that has to do with homicide. From 1980 to 1985 the rate decreased from 10.2 to 8.0, but then increased until 1990, when it reached 9.4. Then the rate began to decrease again until around 2000, where it leveled off at 5.5 and gradually decreased. We thought that it was interesting that murder rates are decreasing, due to the amount of publicized violence that has been occurring in the country, such as gun control issues and school shootings.

Percent of Murders Committed Using Firearms in 2013

31.00% Firearms Other Means of Death

69.00%

In this particular pie chart graph, we found it to be very interesting that 69% of total murders committed in the year 2013 were committed using firearms. Although interesting, we did not find it to be surprising. We don’t find the high percentage of firearm murders surprising because of the current lax gun control laws in the United States. Due to the easy accessibility to guns in the United States, we were expecting the murder by firearm rate to be high in the year 2013, and we further predict that it will be even higher in the years to come. Until gun control reform takes place in the United States, which may take some time, the percentage of murders committed by firearms will remain quite high.

Homicide Victim Rates in the U.S. by Race in 2011 Homicide Victim Rate

20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

White

Black

Other

Race In this graph we found that the number of victims of homicide in 2011 in the united stated was primarily African Americans. We found this surprising since there was such a large difference between homicides of white people, homicides of African American, and homicide of people who fall in the category of other. The difference between the homicide rates of each race come in extremely different. We predict that as violence against black people and other races continues to grow then so will the homicide rate against black and other races. Through the research we conducted, our group discovered that homicide has been and continues to be, a prevalent problem in the United States. It was also clear that, while it is a tragedy that can occur anywhere to anyone, the majority of murders take place in densely populated urban areas, as shown in our first bar graph, and minorities are often targeted as victims, as our first pie chart and second bar graph show. The other graphs our group constructed help to show how present and urgent of an issue homicide has been and still is in the United States, and hopefully call the audience to change. Homicide is a problem that

can, under no circumstance, be taken lightly, and is something that can hopefully decline and maybe even one day cease to exist in our country.

References ProQuest, Statistical Abstract of the United States 2015” Online edition. Tables 320, 321, 322, 324, 325, 326. http://library.depaul.edu/CheckURL.aspx?address=http://search.proquest.com/statistical? landingpage=statab&accountid=10477 ....