# What are some characteristics of places with high murder rates? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 29, 2018, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762 "2018-01-29T22:55:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Contemplation](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Contemplation](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contemplation)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2018, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/1 "2018-01-29T22:55:15Z")
Its often said that murder is the most reliable crime statistic because it is more likely to be reported when it happens than assault, rape, robbery and etc. So if the murder rate is high, its likely that other crimes are also high in that place. What are some characteristics you would associate with a place and it’s people that have a high murder rate? Would people there be less hospitable or something? ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2018, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/2 "2018-01-29T23:25:45Z")
normally it’s a lower income place . ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2018, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/3 "2018-01-29T23:48:13Z")
The easy availability of guns. NOT the gun _laws_ themselves, or lack thereof. I’m not talking about the legality. I’m talking about the availability. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2018, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/4 "2018-01-29T23:51:06Z")
Difficult divorce laws? also: younger people with alcohol. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/5 "2018-01-30T00:38:38Z")
> [@Jacquernagy](#): > > The easy availability of guns. > > NOT the gun _laws_ themselves, or lack thereof. I’m not talking about the legality. I’m talking about the availability. Yes guns are more available in some places because they break into more homes and businesses and steal them and then sell them on the black market. Or they just buy otherwise legal firearms for an exorbitant amount of money through otherwise legal sources. Has nothing to do with availability. They are available everywhere if you are willing to break the law to get them. I think poverty is the bottom line, race, education, cultural backgrounds etc. might be more associated with poverty for reasons that always need to be addressed. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/6 "2018-01-30T02:28:17Z")
> [@Contemplation](#): > > Its often said that murder is the most reliable crime statistic because it is more likely to be reported when it happens than assault, rape, robbery and etc. > So if the murder rate is high, its likely that other crimes are also high in that place. I agree with your first statement (it’s pretty hard to successfully hide a dead body), but I’m not sure that your second statement is accurate. There are lots of crimes for financial gain robbery, mugging, etc.) and some murders are for this reason (inheritance, killing a witness, ‘accidental’ murder during a robbery, burglary, etc.). But most murders are not done primarily for financial reasons, but for personal ones. Fights between couples\*, business partner fights, neighbor disputes, road rage, etc. So it seems like these ‘extra’ murders – crimes of passion or drunkenness – would not correlate with financial crimes, that are higher in poor areas. Or is there evidence that in poverty-stricken areas, fights between couples are more serious because of the stress of living in poverty? (Drunkenness/drug use does not correlate with poverty – arrests for this do, but actual use of alcohol or drugs is pretty constant.) \*Law enforcement friends have told me “In any murder, immediately arrest the spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend of the victim – you’ll be right 2/3rds of the time.”. Joking, but not far off, based on what online research I’ve seen. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/7 "2018-01-30T02:54:54Z")
Poverty primarily. Not necessarily in the city or area as whole but in pockets. Lack of jobs. A high or dense population is “helpful” in conjunction as well. Otherwise Detroit and Caracas don’t have much in common. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/8 "2018-01-30T03:49:11Z")
Murder statistics are not always reliable–cops have been known to declare dead bodies the result of suicides or accidental death, and shift numbers from one year into another to make the figures come out nicer. But in general I agree that murder numbers are probably the “hardest” crime numbers. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/9 "2018-01-30T04:14:48Z")
Wandering a little off-topic, about crime reporting: [Fewer Crimes Get Counted When Police Are Slow To Respond | FiveThirtyEight](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fewer-crimes-get-counted-when-police-are-slow-to-respond/) ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/10 "2018-01-30T04:19:15Z")
A good example of a country with unreliable Murder statistics is Japan > **[Japan's police see no evil](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-09-fg-autopsy9-story.html)** > > A drive to keep crime statistics low often fosters an official aversion to autopsies, critics say. > [@](#): > > Only 6.3% of the unnatural deaths in Aichi are investigated by a medical examiner, a minuscule rate even by nationwide standards in Japan, where an autopsy is performed in 11.2% of cases. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/11 "2018-01-30T06:49:03Z")
One characteristic - all the places with the highest murder rates are ex-colonies. You have to get to number 38 on the [list of countries by homicide rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)before you get to the first non-colony (Russia, surprise surprise) and that’s an outlier . There are few colonies on the other end of the scale (I found the placement of French Polynesia genuinely surprising, for one). So if you told me a place has a high murder rate, I’d expect it to have a colonial history, because that has a high correlation with other factors like poverty. I’m _not_ saying colonialism is directly causative of high murder rates, mind you. Just that it’s strongly characteristic. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/12 "2018-01-30T06:56:51Z")
Murder does tend to be associated with the degradation or breakdown of established social and communal structures. And, of course, colonisation will do that. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/13 "2018-01-30T09:30:28Z")
Legal definitions of municipality, would be one. St. Louis as case in point. Metro St. Louis has no more homicides than any other metro. But by the foibles of state municipality definitions and historical evolution, St. Louis city is geographically very small, encompassing the entire inner city and not much else. So a high proportion of the metro homicides occur in a legal municipality that has a fairly small share of the metro population., but most of the “bad guys”. So urban core “cities” as municipally defined that have relatively small areas often have exaggeratedly high homicide rates. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/14 "2018-01-30T09:35:40Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > Murder statistics are not always reliable–cops have been known to declare dead bodies the result of suicides or accidental death, and shift numbers from one year into another to make the figures come out nicer. Do you have a cite for this outrageous claim? ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/15 "2018-01-30T11:35:38Z")
I know that the cops in Glasgow used to drag the drunks from Sauchiehall Street into Hope Street because it made reporting easier…🙂 On a serious note, it is self-evident that murder and other crimes will be proportional to the likelihood of detection and/or prosecution. There are any number of ways to murder someone with or without access to guns - in the UK, where guns are relatively rare, knife crime is disproportionately high, but the overall murder rate is quite low. On [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_death_rate) list I see the USA ranks in the middle and the UK nearer the bottom. ---
**Author:** ![excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e8c25b/32.png) [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/excavating_for_a_mind)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/16 "2018-01-30T15:01:03Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > Murder does tend to be associated with the degradation or breakdown of established social and communal structures. And, of course, colonisation will do that. It seems to me that ending colonization leads more to “breakdown of established social and communal structures.” Not that colonization is a good thing as it has been proven to be rife with abuse and injustice, but my understanding is that during colonization, social and communal structures were well established. > [@Jacquernagy](#): > > The easy availability of guns. > > NOT the gun _laws_ themselves, or lack thereof. I’m not talking about the legality. I’m talking about the availability. From the data in Mr. Dibble’s post, Brazil has the highest number of murders (55,574 in 2015 or 26.74/100,000) much higher than the US (16,696 in 2015 or 4.88 /100,000). Gun availability is much lower in Brazil (estimated at 17 million per 207 million population) than in the US (estimated at 300 million per 323 million). This seems to suggest that the higher the availability of guns, the lower the murder rate. In any case, it does show that easy availability of guns is not a strong indicator of the murder rate. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/17 "2018-01-30T15:06:30Z")
> [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](#): > > It seems to me that ending colonization leads more to “breakdown of established social and communal structures.” Not that colonization is a good thing as it has been proven to be rife with abuse and injustice, but my understanding is that during colonization, social and communal structures were well established. Those which existed before were broken; the new ones created often boiled down to “cos I’m the one with the guns”. How bad the change was would depend on how healthy the old system and the new system were. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/18 "2018-01-30T15:10:34Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > Do you have a cite for this outrageous claim? Probably watched The Wire. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/19 "2018-01-30T15:37:09Z")
You mean other than all the dead people? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2018, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762/20 "2018-01-30T15:50:55Z")
murder rates vary widely by geography. It is especially high in Central and South America plus the Carribean. Then Africa is the next highest, then Easter Europe, then Western Europe, then Asia. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-characteristics-of-places-with-high-murder-rates/807762.md?page=2)