Measuring the Probability of Homicide
Analysts in The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis (CDA) used data on homicide deaths from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to examine the continuing impact of high murder rates on urban minority communities during the 1990s.
To begin measuring the human impact of homicide within these communities, the Heritage analysts calculated the average probability that a 15-year-old black male would be murdered before reaching his 45th birthday in the eight above-listed urban counties with large African-American populations.
Despite the recent reductions in Crime rates across the nation, African-American males in each of these eight urban areas continue to face an extremely high probability of being killed before they reach middle age. (See Chart 1.) For example:
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Based on 1998 murder rates, approximately one in every 12 black 15-year-old males who live in Washington, D.C., can expect to be murdered before reaching age 45.
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For Brooklyn, the major urban community with the lowest 1998 homicide rates for young black males, roughly one in every 53 black 15-year-old males will die from homicide before reaching their 45th birthday.
■By contrast, based on the 1998 murder rates, the average 15-year-old U.S. male faces a very low one-in-185 probability of being murdered before reaching age 45. Nationally, a similarly aged black male faces an average probability of one in 45 that he will die from homicide before reaching age 45. An average white male faces a one-in-345 probability of being murdered before reaching age 45.
A Risk Worse than Military Combat? An analysis of historical data shows that, despite different time spans, serving in the U.S. military during wartime may be preferable to living in some urban communities today.8
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The average probability of being murdered in 1998 before reaching age 45 for a young black male ranged from 8.47 percent in Washington, D.C., to 1.89 percent in Brooklyn.
■By comparison, the death rate for U.S. soldiers serving in the military during World War II was 2.5 percent; during World War I, it was 2.4 percent; and during the Vietnam War, 1.2 percent of those who served in the military were killed.
Strictly speaking, these military death rates are not comparable to the rate for young black males in urban communities because they were endured over much shorter periods of time; but they do illustrate the magnitude of the risk faced by African-American males in these eight communities today.
Uneven Rates
Although the overall U.S. male homicide rate declined by almost 35 percent from 1991 to 1998, not all U.S. cities benefited to the same degree from this general reduction. (See Chart 2.) During the 1991 to 1998 period, black males between the ages of 15 and 45 in the District of Columbia and the New Orleans area still faced particularly high probabilities of dying from homicide.
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From 1991 to 1998, the homicide mortality rate fell from 10.2 percent to 8.5 percent in Washington, D.C., and from 10.4 percent to 7.1 percent in New Orleans.
■Most dramatically, while Baltimore City had the second lowest homicide rate for black males in 1991 among the eight communities in this analysis, by 1998 its murder rate had actually risen to the second highest rank behind Washington, D.C.
Read more:
Young African-American Males: Continuing Victims of High Homicide Rates in Urban Communities
Please note: There was no differentiation in the methods of the killings.
