Murders Surge in Florida in Decade after "Stand Your Ground" Law
"Murders climbed 22 percent in Florida in the decade after the state enacted its `Stand Your Ground’ self-defense law, even after accounting for the expected spike in justifiable homicides, a new study suggests.

Before the law took effect in October 2005, Florida residents had a right to use lethal force when they felt their life was endangered by a home intruder. The `Stand Your Ground’ law extended this right beyond the home, justifying deadly force for self-defense in other situations. 

On average, from 1999 to 2005, lawful homicides accounted for just 3.4 percent of all homicides in Florida. Between 2006 and 2015, the proportion of lawful homicides rose, accounting on average for 8.7 percent of homicides, researchers report in JAMA Internal Medicine."

View the Study

 

The US Murder Rate Is on Track to Be Lowest in a Century

This is fairly preliminary data, but Rick Nevin reports that if current trends keep up, we'll end 2013 with the murder rate in America at its lowest rate in over a century.

Analytically speaking, murder is an especially interesting crime because we have pretty good homicide statistics going all the way back to 1900. Most other crimes have only been tracked since about 1960. And if you look at the murder rate in the chart below (the red line), you see that it follows an odd double-hump pattern: rising in the first third of the century, reaching a peak around 1930; then declining until about 1960; then rising again, reaching a second peak around 1990. It's been dropping ever since then.

This is the exact same pattern we see in lead ingestion among small children, offset by 21 years (the black line). Lead exposure rises in the late 1800s, during the heyday of lead paint, reaching a peak around 1910; then declines through World War II; and then begins rising again during our postwar love affair with big cars that burned high-octane leaded gasoline. Lead finally enters its final decline in the mid-70s when we begin the switch to unleaded gasoline.

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New York Celebrates Record Low Homicides in 2012 While Chicago Grapples With Spike

Even though New Yorkers were terrified by news that a woman pushed a man in front of a train in Queens on Thursday night (a suspect was in custody Saturday) in what was the second subway fatality of its kind in a month, the truth is that it was quite a safe year to be a resident of the Big Apple. Murders in New York dropped to their lowest level in more than 40 years with 414 recorded homicides as of Friday, compared with 515 for the same period last year, and lower than the previous record low of 471 set in 2009, reports the New York Times. That is quite the contrast from the early 1990s, when the number of homicides in a year easily reached the low 2,000s. While murders decreased, thefts increased, based almost entirely in a soaring number of robberies of Apple devices, including iPhones.

While New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg celebrated the latest plunge, officials in the country’s third-largest city have been grappling with how to make sure 2013 doesn’t see a repeat of what was a very bloody year. The murder count in Chicago reached 500 last Friday, the first time it reached that number in four years, when 513 were killed in 2008, reports the Chicago Tribune. It marked a 17 percent increase in homicides from last year, in large part because of gang violence that seems to be increasingly audacious, points out the Associated Press. Still, the number of homicides this year pales in comparison to what the city saw in the early 1990s when around 900 people were killed every year.

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Homicides decrease in Washington region

The number of homicides dropped again last year in the Washington region, including in the District, which grew in population and yet recorded the fewest killings in a half-century.

As of Monday evening, the District had 88 killings in 2012, a milestone for D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier, whose long-standing goal has been fewer than 100 homicides. As recently as 2009, the District had 140 killings. In 2011, there were 108.

In Prince George’s County, where crime dropped in nearly every category, there were 63 homicides, down from 97 in 2011, a harkening back to the 1980s, when the county had more farmland than urban centers or upscale subdivisions.

Police point to several reasons for the decrease, which has been part of a years-long national trend in some major cities across the country.Authorities have broken up dozens of violent gangs, seized thousands of guns, used technology to monitor the streets and directed additional resources to high-crime areas.

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Rise in homicides is of ‘no real consequence,’ criminologist says

Don’t panic.

True, the number of homicides in Canada increased this year over last. True, fatal stabbings increased sharply. True, the figures arrive amid a divisive national policy debate over Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s tough-on-crime agenda.

But, according to the experts, what is the real conclusion to be drawn from the latest Statistics Canada figures on homicides?

Essentially: Take a deep breath. “You can’t infer anything from today’s numbers,” said Simon Fraser University criminologist Neil Boyd. “An increase of 7 per cent is of no real consequence.”

To glean broad trends from one year’s stats is equivalent to holding up a cold winter’s day as proof that climate change is a fraud, criminologists say. When experts look for criminal patterns in Statscan numbers, they work with periods of no less than 10 years.

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D.C. homicides: When is a murder case ‘solved’?

I look closely at investigative stories written by The Post. Investigation is a key competency of The Post and should remain so, not just because of the Watergate legacy but because this is one of the prime functions of newspapers — holding government and institutions accountable. I hear this from readers all the time; they want fact-based, hard-hitting investigations that keep people honest.

One recent investigative story was Cheryl W. Thompson’s front-page article on Feb. 19, “The trick to D.C.’s homicide closure rate.” It had no factual inaccuracies — all the statistics in it are true — but in its language and tone, it seemed to tell a story more of gotcha than of scandal. I don’t think D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier used trickery in her reporting of statistics to mislead the public about the solving of homicide cases.

Rather than suggesting that Lanier was fudging numbers, I think the story would have worked far better as a straightforward explanation of how the Metropolitan Police Department, other major police departments and the FBI keep homicide statistics — and of some of the pitfalls in that method.

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Homicides plunge in Toronto to lowest level in 25 years

Toronto has closed the book on 2011 with the lowest homicide total in a quarter century.

The city recorded 45 homicides, the lowest number since 1986 when there were 37 murders. In 2010 there were 61 homicides.

This is also the fourth straight year of declines since 2007 when the city recorded its deadliest year (matched in 1991) with 86 homicides.

The big drop in Toronto numbers no doubt bolsters Chief Bill Blair’s image, which took a hit in 2010 following the mass arrests during the meeting of G20 leaders and the controversy that followed.

Blair says there’s still more work to do.

“I think we can make this city safer,” the chief told the Star.

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Gun control, homicide rates not linked: study

Criminal record checks, 28-day waiting periods, the long-gun registry: none has done anything to stem Canadian firearm homicide rates, according to a new study by an emergency-medicine academic.

“No significant beneficial associations between firearms legislation and homicide or spousal homicide rates were found,” reads the abstract on the study, written by Caillin Langmann, a resident in the division of emergency medicine at McMaster University, and himself a vocal foe of gun-control measures who has argued instead for enhanced social programs to combat the causes of gun violence.

To be published in an upcoming issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Interpersonal Violence, the study took Statistics Canada data on Canadian firearm homicides and compared them to three key pieces of Canadian firearms legislation.

The three pieces of legislation were the 1995 long-gun registry, a 1977 bill that imposed a requirement for criminal records checks and a 1991 bill that imposed mandatory safety training and a 28-day waiting period on firearms purchases.

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Calling John Lott. Calling John Lott.

PM plays with numbers on gang-related homicides

“Let us not delude ourselves, it is getting worse, not better. Between 2000 and 2008, the number of homicides in Canada attributed to gangs doubled from one in eight to one in four.” – Prime Minister Stephen Harper in announcing government funding for an anti-gang program.

It’s unfortunate that Stephen Harper chose Surrey, B.C., to make his remarks about gang-related crime rates “getting worse.” Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts has been trying so hard to change the image of the municipality, backed with statistics that show the city’s crime rate has decreased every year since 2003.

Yet Mr. Harper did not pull crime statistics out of thin air. He was partly right in what he said. But in promoting the Conservative government’s approach to crime, Mr. Harper ignored general trends in homicide. Relying on out-of-date statistics, he distorted the numbers to back up his political agenda.

The Prime Minister made the comments as he announced the renewal of financial support for a federal $37.5-million youth-crime prevention program, a worthwhile initiative that is helping young people make better decisions in their lives.

His comments reflect Statistics Canada figures that show gang-related homicides nationally jumped to 138 in 2008, from 72 in the year 2000. But before looking at those numbers, consider some perspective from Statistics Canada.

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Homicides in the District of Columbia by Police District, 2001 - 2009

Joshus Markman, John Roman

Abstract

This brief examines homicides in the District of Columbia over the period 2001 — 2009, both citywide and by police district. The analysis found that homicides declined more than 70 percent between 1991 and 2009, and 20 percent between 2008 and 2009. District-level analyses found that in all Districts but District 4, homicide rates dropped from 2006 — 2009. District 4 saw a small increase in its homicide rate. Homicides were also found to be relatively rare in District 1, 2, and 3. The full brief provides more in-depth findings on the changes in homicide rates in other Districts.

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The full research brief is available at this link. Tom