Is Cincinnati's homicide rate better than it looks?
The good news, at least according to three prominent criminologists, is that it's not as bad as it looks.
The Improving Crime Data project at the University of Georgia attempts to adjust homicide rates after controlling for a number of "crime-producing factors": the poverty rate, the male unemployment rate, the black population, the number of single mothers, the median family income, neighborhood stability and city population.
After running the numbers on Cincinnati's 2005 homicide rate, the city dropped from 8th to 19th. And it puts Cincinnati's adjusted homicide rate below peer cities like Columbus and Indianapolis.
That adjusted ranking means that Cincinnati actually had fewer homicides than would be expected given its population. And, the authors suggest, it could mean that Cincinnati's anti-crime policies are actually working. The authors explain:
Police and other public officials, especially in high-crime cities, often complain that ranking cities by their crime rates -- as in the recent Morgan Quitno Press crime rankings -- is misleading and unfair because cities differ in poverty, racial disadvantage, and other crime-producing factors beyond their control. Criminologists Richard Rosenfeld, Alfred Blumstein, and Robert Friedmann applied a statistical model that adjusts each city's homicide figures for such factors. The researchers maintain that the model produces a more meaningful comparison of city homicide levels, especially for providing insight into the effectiveness of criminal justice policies and programs.
Of
course,
the
study
is
based
on
2005
data,
when
the
city
had
79
homicides.
We'll
have
to
wait
until
next
year
to
see
whether
the
most
recent
spike
in
homicides
negates
those
findings.
SOURCE:
City
Homicide
Rankings
Adjusted
for
Differences
in
Crime-Producing
Factors
Labels: crime, demographics
