Monday, September 6, 2010

Astonishing Look at New York City's Homicide Rate by Race

Yesterday's post noted an interesting article in the New York Times written by Clyde Haberman, "To Lengthen Men's Lives, Focus on Guns," http://mattmangino.blogspot.com/2010/09/gun-violence-and-life-expectancy.html. There was an interesting paragraph in the article that merited some additional investigation.

The article focused on how gun violence targeted toward young men has expanded the disparity between life expectancy of men and women. In New York City, the life expectancy of a woman is 82 years-of-age for men it is 76-years-of-age.

Near the end of the column Mr. Haberman suggested that less gun violence would most favor blacks and Latinos, "they account for 95 percent of both homicide victims and suspects in the city."

New York City has averaged less than 500 homicides over the last three years (496, 516 and 461) that would mean that less 25 Caucasians were killed in New York City each year. That number seemed unbelievably low.

New York City has 8.4 million residents and millions of tourists each year. A New York Times article on September 2, 2010 had a little different take on the numbers.

From 2003 through 2009, New York City averaged 540 murders a year. Caucasian men and women represented, on average, 8-percent of murder victims and 7-percent of killers. That would amount to about 43 Caucasian victims of murder each year and about 37 killings by Caucasian perpetrators per year. Still astonishingly low numbers for one of the world's largest cities.

To read more: http://projects.nytimes.com/crime/homicides/map?ref=nyregion&emc=eta1

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even more interesting is when you take into account demographics;

non-hispanic whites make up about 33% of NYC yet account for only 7% of homocides making their rate of murder less then .25 (less then one murder committed by every 4 non-hispanic whites.

blacks and hispanics each make up about 28% of NYC yet account for 95% of murders making their murder rate almost 4-1 or 16 murders committed for every 4 blacks or hispanics.

In other words, 1/3 of the population was responsible for 35 of the 550 deaths in NYC and 1/2 the population was responsible for the other 515 murders. Yet 'we' rally in Times Square against the gun murder of one black man and claim it was 'racial profiling' on top of it.

If I have 10 people in a room and just the odds tell me that randomly arresting one of 4 specific people will net me a 7% change of getting the murderer and arresting one of 4 other specific people will net me a 95% change of getting the murderer, it is good law enforcement to go with those odds.

Anonymous said...

to put it into even greater perspective; in the last 20 years around 1/2 MILLION people were killed by firearms. Well over 1/2 of those murders were committed by blacks who only represent 1/12th of the population while 'only' while less ten 10% were killed by whites who make up 80% of the population.

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