Research Refines Homicide Statistics

Los Angeles has been called the murder capital of the United States. But a new study of homicide rates that takes poverty into account challenges this notion: By this new measure, Los Angeles actually falls nearer the middle of the pack for homicide rates -- 24th on a list of 67 large American cities in 2002, and 42nd on the same list in 2003.

That put Los Angeles just below Chicago and Dallas for 2002, and just above Denver and Philadelphia -- although there were 653 killings in Los Angeles that year, the most of any city in the nation. After Los Angeles homicides fell by 23% in 2003, the city's ranking dropped even further, placing it closer to Tucson and Milwaukee. The finding suggests that Los Angeles' large number of homicides can mostly be explained by its high poverty rate and other demographic characteristics.

Social scientists are able to calculate the expected number of homicides for a city based on certain social and economic factors. Hoping to refine conventional crime statistics, this study examines homicide rates that are in excess of the expected rate.

Using that method, researchers found that Los Angeles ranks lower in homicides than many other cities -- including smaller, wealthier ones, particularly San Francisco.

Researchers were surprised to find that, if differences in wealth, demographics and racial composition were taken into account, San Francisco ranked first in the nation in homicides in both 2002 and 2003.

San Francisco's homicide rate of about nine per every 100,000 people is moderate by traditional standards. But the rate is strikingly high given San Francisco's wealth and low-risk demographics, the researchers said.

The broader finding, according to researchers, is that big cities may not be the crucibles of violent crime they are often assumed to be.

Instead, the study suggests, homicide rates are high in some of America's large cities largely because that's where poor people live: Poverty and homicide tend to go hand in hand.

With a few exceptions, "the blighted urban core -- the classical crime areas," didn't pop out as the hotspots, said George State University professor Robert Friedmann, one of the study's researchers.

Conventional crime-data reports, besides lagging several years behind, are much less refined than those routinely used to measure educational or economic trends, Friedmann said. Comparisons of cities based on raw per capita rates unfairly pit wealthy San Diego against economically distressed Detroit, he said, yielding little practical insight.