City Murder Rates

[Chisouthside]

The suntimes database is at 706 for the year and includes expressway shootings. And while 706 is still awful I wonder where the discrepancy lies.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Chisouthside

The suntimes database is at 706 for the year and includes expressway shootings. And while 706 is still awful I wonder where the discrepancy lies.

one of the other differences is that heyjackass does do their best to go back and adjust the figures for victims who don't immediately die of their gun shot wounds.

some shooting victims can cling to life for days/weeks in the hospital before ultimately passing away.

those cases should absolutely count as homicides, but they can easily slip through the cracks in a city that experiences thousands of shootings each year.

i don't know if that difference makes up for all of the discrepancy, but it likely accounts for some of it.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Qubert

Anarchy as a political and social philosophy in the end always has this contridiction to it: If I can "stop" you from doing something *or* "make" you do something is it really anarchy? What defines a "state", since pre-modern societies most certainly had codes of conduct, hierarchies, and notions of group responsiblity. Even during the hunter-gatherer period tribes most certainly made sure whoever was responsible for pitching the tent, hunting, rearing the children, etc got that done. Period. The groups survival depended on it.

Yup. And of course even in more primitive times there were defended "borders" of a sort that delimited a certain group's hunting territory, for example.

Any time one has any kind of societal organization (even the most rudimentary ones) you'll inevitably get borders or limits.

And this is all related to my point about how the currently popular view that somehow borders are unnatural, artificial and unjust modern constructs is debunked by the history of humans and how we've always organized ourselves to live together in groups.

[Investing In Chicago]

Is there a city in the developed world with more total homicides than Chicago?

[Crawford]

Almost certainly no. I mean, the top 20 or so cities should be American. The developed world is basically the U.S., Western Europe, a few countries in East Asia and some British Empire remnants.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Almost certainly no. I mean, the top 20 or so cities should be American. The developed world is basically the U.S., Western Europe, a few countries in East Asia and some British Empire remnants.

Do you consider South Africa to be the developed world?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

Is there a city in the developed world with more total homicides than Chicago?

Probably not, but it's also an arbitrary stat.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Do you consider South Africa to be the developed world?

I wouldn't. I'd put South Africa more with countries like Chile, Argentina, Turkey, Malaysia, and pretty much all of Eastern Europe. Not fitting neatly into the old Cold War first/third world definitions.

But obviously if South Africa is considered developed, it will top even the U.S. re. developed nation violent crime stats.

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Probably not, but it's also an arbitrary stat.

Not sure what is arbitrary about it, but it was just a question.

It's mind boggling that Chicago had more murders this year and pretty much every year in recent memory than NYC + London + Paris combined!

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

Not sure what is arbitrary about it, but it was just a question.

The municipal boundaries of Chicago are arbitrary. That there were X numbers of murders within the boundary of some imaginary box is a useless stat in a global context.

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The municipal boundaries of Chicago are arbitrary. That there were X numbers of murders within the boundary of some imaginary box is a useless stat in a global context.

Again, it was a question. Wasn't meant to be some case study on criminal behavior. It's really just a way to put into context how fucked up the crime in Chicago is; another way to think about it, Chicago will end up with as many (or more) murders as the entire country of France (which is nearly 70M people) or England (65M people) or Germany (83M people).

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

Again, it was a question. Wasn't meant to be some case study on criminal behavior. It's really just a way to put into context how fucked up the crime in Chicago is; another way to think about it, Chicago will end up with as many (or more) murders as the entire country of France (which is nearly 70M people) or England (65M people) or Germany (83M people).

But we actually don't know that to be true, because of the arbitrariness of municipal boundaries. Does the arbitrary way that "Chicago" is organized mean that most of the murders in "Chicago" are attributed to this imaginary box? Or is "Chicago" much more violent than similarly sized "Dallas" and "Houston"? (Quotes used to denote the urban agglomerations) We really don't know because we don't look at murder stats that way. But it would be an extremely useful thing to understand.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

It's really just a way to put into context how fucked up the crime in Chicago is

well yes, the rate of gun violence in chicago is absolutely appalling and atrocious.

it's a massive ongoing human tragedy and major societal failing.

what's more, while chicago's level of gun violence does indeed attract a lot of negative attention for the city because of the large aggregate numbers it puts up each year, in terms of homicide rate, it's not even in the top 10 in the US.

yes, gun violence in chicago is fucked up.

but more broadly, gun violence in america is fucked up.



chicago is not really the outlier here, our stupid fucking nation is.

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

But we actually don't know that to be true, because of the arbitrariness of municipal boundaries. Does the arbitrary way that "Chicago" is organized mean that most of the murders in "Chicago" are attributed to this imaginary box? Or is "Chicago" much more violent than similarly sized "Dallas" and "Houston"? (Quotes used to denote the urban agglomerations) We really don't know because we don't look at murder stats that way. But it would be an extremely useful thing to understand.

I understand what you are saying, and yes the VAST majority of murders in ChicagoLAND are within the city of Chicago, but as a metro area, Chicago recorded ~1100 murders in 2020. Would be interesting to see how that compares to other metro areas - does ChicagoLAND have more murders than LA Metro or the NY Tri State area? We already know it has more than England, France, and Germany as I already stated.

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

well yes, the rate of gun violence in chicago is absolutely appalling and atrocious.

it's a massive human tragedy and major societal failing.

what's more, while chicago's level of gun violence does indeed attract a lot of negative attention for the city because of the large aggregate numbers it puts up each year, in terms of homicide rate, it's not even in the top in the US.

yes, gun violence in chicago is fucked up.

but more broadly, gun violence in america is fucked up.

Sure I 100% agree. I just don't compare Chicago to Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, etc....i'm looking at the top shelf US cities / global cities, where Chicago is indeed a bit more of an outlier (with Philly and DC depending on the year).

[lio45]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The municipal boundaries of Chicago are arbitrary. That there were X numbers of murders within the boundary of some imaginary box is a useless stat in a global context.

What's not arbitrary at all is that somewhere in the Chicago area, there's ~X square miles with ~Y inhabitants where there's ~Z murders a year, with Z being absolutely out of whack when compared to equivalent data from anywhere in England, France, Canada, Germany, etc.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by lio45

What's not arbitrary at all is that somewhere in the Chicago area, there's ~X square miles with ~Y inhabitants where there's ~Z murders a year, with Z being absolutely out of whack when compared to equivalent data from anywhere in England, France, Canada, Germany, etc.

indeed, east & west garfield park on chicago's west side is 3.25 square miles and home to 37,425 people.

so far this year those 3.25 sq. miles have recorded 66 homicides, and will likely end the year with ~70, which would make a for a homicide rate of 187 per 100K!

i very highly doubt there's a more violent 3 sq. mile patch of land anywhere in europe. i doubt there's anything even remotely close to that over there.

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

Sure I 100% agree. I just don't compare Chicago to Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, etc....i'm looking at the top shelf US cities / global cities, where Chicago is indeed a bit more of an outlier (with Philly and DC depending on the year).

chicago's economy very much lags the coastal darlings. we're still dealing with some hardcore rust-belt-itis out here that the new yorks, bostons, san franciscos, and los angeles of the nation have largely moved on from/never had to deal with to the same extent.

we have tens of thousands of young able-bodied men that we simply don't know how to get into gainful long-term employment, and as the old saying goes, idle hands are the devil's playthings.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by lio45

What's not arbitrary at all is that somewhere in the Chicago area, there's ~X square miles with ~Y inhabitants where there's ~Z murders a year, with Z being absolutely out of whack when compared to equivalent data from anywhere in England, France, Canada, Germany, etc.

It's out of whack compared to Europe and Canada, but not in the context of the U.S. It's probably closer to average in the U.S.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

It's out of whack compared to Europe and Canada, but not in the context of the U.S. It's probably closer to average in the U.S.

Sure, I think everyone so far agrees Chicago isn't that much of an outlier (if it's an outlier, it's as the Alpha-est city of the more "murderous" ones (St. Louis, Baltimore...)) but that's not what you had said there:

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The municipal boundaries of Chicago are arbitrary. That there were X numbers of murders within the boundary of some imaginary box is a useless stat in a global context.

In a global (developed world) context, the fact that you can find X numbers of murders within the boundary of an imaginary box of a defined size is not a useless stat at all, because when you show random Germans and English and French and Canadians how crazy high "X" is relative to the area/population of your arbitrary box, they'll have eyes like quarters.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by lio45

Sure, I think everyone so far agrees Chicago isn't that much of an outlier (if it's an outlier, it's as the Alpha-est city of the more "murderous" ones (St. Louis, Baltimore...)) but that's not what you had said there:

In a global (developed world) context, the fact that you can find X numbers of murders within the boundary of an imaginary box of a defined size is not a useless stat at all, because when you show random Germans and English and French and Canadians how crazy high "X" is relative to the area/population of your arbitrary box, they'll have eyes like quarters.

I think it still stands because we don't even know that "Chicago" even has the most number of murders of any urban agglomeration (could be true, but we don't know for sure). We just know that Chicago has the most murders in an arbitrary box that only includes a fraction of the Chicago agglomeration.