Murder trends for 2010 were not nearly as exciting as 2009. Murders declined again, but not by a large number. Most of 2010 looked like 2009, the main exception being that there were far fewer deaths classified as homicides due to prior year murders. As I've been doing, any homicides classified due to an act in a prior year are counted in that prior year (by going back and editing data). So using this methodology I get slightly different numbers than the official tally, but I think it's better for tracking trends.
In 2009 there were officially 238 murders in Baltimore, but 14 of them were due to acts of violence from prior years, so I count that as 224 murders. In 2010 there were officially 223 murders in Baltimore, but 4 of them were due to acts of violence in prior years (none of them from 2009 though, so no upward modification). So while the official numbers drop from 238 to 223 (a 6.3% decrease), my count drops from 224 to 219 (a 2.2% decrease).
Still, we've come a long way since 2007. The 2010 total is down 20% from 2007. The improvements are pretty obvious when you look at the homicides by month and the cumulative plot of homicides for the last four years.
In fact, 2007 was such a higher total than 2008-10, it's actually better to remove it to compare the more recent years.
So what do we have? Looks mostly like stability. Sure, from 2008 to 2010 there were about 14 fewer homicides in Baltimore, a total of a 6% decrease. Not terribly impressive, even if murders continue decreasing at this rate we'll have to wait until 2017 to see murders become something that happens only every other day. That's not a terribly cheerful prediction. Hopefully the continued focus on reducing illegal guns in the city will continue to lower shootings and homicide rate will drop faster.
It needs to. Baltimore's per capita murder rate remains one of the worst in the country. At 35 per 100,000 (my math based on 223 official murders and U.S. Census estimated population for 2009). However, if you are African-American in Baltimore the per-capita murder rate is unbelievable. According to Anna Ditkoff of Murder Ink, 90.6% of 2010's murder victims were African-American. Based on Baltimore's demographics, this indicates that African-Americans in Baltimore face a 50 per 100,000 per capita murder rate while residents of other races experience a 9 per 100,000 per capita murder rate. To put that in perspective, residents who are not African-American are safer in Baltimore than the average Albuquerque resident (source: Wikipedia article on crime in US cities).
Finally, my favorite chart that I create for tracking murder trends:
Vertical axis magnified:
Links to previous year's homicide summaries:
2009 Year End Summary
2008 Year End Summary
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