Homicide in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago

Abstract

Homicide rates are understood in large part by comparison. Almost without thinking we compare this year to last, this place to that. Usually we make modest leaps in time and space, taking adjacent sites and time periods in an effort to hold constant otherwise uncontrollable factors. But, in keeping the comparisons modest, we may lose the leverage necessary to make sense of rates. Simply put, the theoretical questions we must address are very different if the United States has always had rates and short term variations similar to those of the present as opposed to completely different ones. If, for example, the highs of 1990 and the lows of 1999 represent a range within which rates have always fluctuated, then the objects to be explained are customary and normal. If, on the other hand, they are extraordinary, or occur only in particular times and places, the explanatory task is very different. Establishing American homicide rates for a wide range of times and places is fundamental to our understanding of homicide. As a beginning of this effort, this paper reports on reconstructed homicide rates from six large and representative cities for 1900, and for what were the nation's two largest cities-Chicago and New York City-over a long span. In order to compare homicide rates from places separated by long distances in time or space, one must take more care than is customary to make data similar.' Comparing this year's count to last