STUDIES: FBI Releases 2011 Crime Report Showing Drop in Murder Rates

On October 29, the U.S. Justice Department released the annu­al FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2011, indi­cat­ing that the nation­al mur­der rate dropped 1.5% from 2010. This decline occurred at a time when the use of the death penal­ty is also decreas­ing nation­al­ly. The Northeast region, which uses the death penal­ty the least, had the low­est mur­der rate of the 4 geo­graph­ic regions, and saw a 6.4% fur­ther decrease in its mur­der rate in 2011, the largest decrease of any region. By con­trast, the South, which car­ries out more exe­cu­tions than any oth­er region, had the high­est mur­der rate. It saw a small decline from last year. The mur­der rate in the West remained about the same, while the rate in the Midwest increased slight­ly. Four of the five states with the high­est mur­der rates are death-penal­ty states, while four of the five states with the low­est mur­der rates are states with­out the death penal­ty. See table below.

On the whole, the num­ber of vio­lent crimes in the U.S. dropped 3.8% from 2010 to 2011.

(T. Frieden, ​“U.S. vio­lent crime down for fifth straight year,” CNN, October 29, 2012; ​“Crime in the United States, 2011″, U.S. Dept. of Justice, October 29, 2012; DPIC analy­sis). See Deterrence and Murder Rates. Listen to DPIC’s pod­cast on Deterrence.

Rates are num­ber of mur­ders per 100,000 persons.