Murder Rates

Overview

The foun­da­tion for the death penal­ty in the U.S. rests on whether it is nec­es­sary as a response to mur­der. About 40 per­cent of the states have end­ed the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Of the remain­ing states that retain it, only a few use it on a reg­u­lar basis. The mur­der rates of states with and with­out the death penal­ty are rel­e­vant to whether it is jus­ti­fied. The mur­der rate for the coun­try as a whole over var­i­ous time peri­ods is also a barom­e­ter of whether or not the pub­lic will be in favor of harsh­er pun­ish­ments for crime. Murder rates, which are the result of divid­ing the num­ber of mur­ders by the pop­u­la­tion of a juris­dic­tion, can be more use­ful in com­par­ing states and coun­tries than the absolute num­ber of murders committed.

At Issue

In try­ing to mea­sure whether the use of the death penal­ty has an effect on the lev­el of vio­lent crime, researchers often use mur­der rates and com­pare them with the prac­tice of the death penal­ty, either through the num­ber of exe­cu­tions or death sen­tences. This is prob­lem­at­ic on a nation­al basis because the death penal­ty is not avail­able in many states, and where it is car­ried out, the exe­cu­tions amount to only a tiny per­cent­age of the mur­ders com­mit­ted. Even when com­par­ing states, it is dif­fi­cult to sin­gle out whether the rel­a­tive­ly rare use of the death penal­ty is caus­ing a change in crime or whether the change is attrib­ut­able to oth­er caus­es such as the rate of employ­ment, the qual­i­ty of edu­ca­tion, or many oth­er local variables.

What DPIC Offers

DPIC has col­lect­ed sta­tis­tics pub­lished by the FBI on the mur­der rates in each state for each year, each geo­graph­i­cal region, and for the coun­try as a whole. DPIC deep­ens the analy­sis by not­ing whether each state had the death penal­ty for the time peri­od in ques­tion. Murder rates can eas­i­ly be com­pared with oth­er avail­able data, such as the num­ber of exe­cu­tions, death sen­tences, and the size of death row.

Data Sources:

• FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2019 (pub­lished Sept. 2020)
• FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2018 (pub­lished Sept. 2019)
• FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2017 (pub­lished Sept. 2018)
• FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2016 (pub­lished Sept. 2017)
• FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2015 (pub­lished Oct. 2016)
• FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2014 (pub­lished Oct. 2015)
• FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2013 (pub­lished Nov. 2014)
• FBI Uniform Crime Reports for ear­li­er years: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008