The 2015 homicide increase in the nation’s large cities was real and nearly unprecedented, according to a report released this morning by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).
In the report, Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions, Richard Rosenfeld, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, observed the scale of the homicide increase for a sample of 56 large U.S. cities.
He anticipates the year-end 2015 homicide rate for this sample will be close to a 16.8 percent rise over 2014. As a comparison, between 2004 and 2006, national violent crime rates rose by 3.5 percent and homicide rates increased by 5.4 percent.
Rosenfeld examined three plausible explanations of the homicide rise: an expansion of urban drug markets fueled by the heroin epidemic, reductions in incarceration resulting in a growing number of released prisoners and a “Ferguson effect” resulting from widely publicized incidents of police use of deadly force against minority citizens.
He notes the timing of the increase provides stronger support for the Ferguson effect explanation than for explanations attributing the homicide rise to expanding drug markets or declining imprisonment.
The full report is attached below, and can also be found here: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/249895.pdf
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