Missouri Tops the Nation for High Black Homicide Rate . . . Again

Missouri has the highest black homicide rate in the United States, according to a report by the Violence Policy Center.

The study, called the Black Homicide Victimization in the United States: An Analysis of 2015 Homicide Data, examined federal data from 2015. It found that the homicide rates for blacks in Missouri is 46.24 per 100,000, more than double the national black homicide rate of 18.67 per 100,000. (The national white homicide victimization rate of 2.67 per 100,000.)

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Federal data from the FBI Supplementary Homicide Report were used to rank the homicide rates for each state. Missouri has ranked number one in black homicide rates seven times since the release of the Violence Policy Center’s first report in 2007.

“Poverty, joblessness, racial isolation — all of those factors contribute to the conditions leading to high homicide rates and other forms of serious crime,” said Richard Rosenfeld, the Founders Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

The high rate of homicides among blacks is often attributed to larger black populations in the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City, Rosenfeld said. But overall the report found that the black homicide rate in Missouri is 10 times higher than the homicide rate in the entire U.S. population of 4.62 per 100,000.

“We have to create more opportunities, both educationally and employment-related opportunities for folks in underserved populations who are living in these communities that are more susceptible to violence,” St. Louis NAACP President Adolphus Pruitt said.

Pruitt said the NAACP supports several programs to reduce the rate of black homicides, including encouraging more African-Americans to join police departments. {snip}

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For homicides where weapons were identified, the report found that 93 percent of black homicides in Missouri occurred from gun violence. The FBI data used does include justifiable homicides of blacks who were killed by law enforcement.