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How Does Lethality Increase Homicide Rates

1/29/2019

1 Comment

 
In the District of Columbia, there is an interesting trend emerging. While the homicide rates have indeed been increasing, the level of violent crime has been decreasing…but how can that be? Surely more violent crime would lead to more homicides, right? Not necessarily, and in DC, quite the opposite it seems! The reason for this is something called “lethality”.
 
People who get shot don’t always die. Many survivors of actual gun shot wounds live on, some uninterrupted by the tragedy that befell them. Of course, many instances occur in which people have physical ailments for the rest of their lives due to the wounds inflicted upon them. A bullet in the spine will likely leave a person paralyzed. A bullet in the brain may lead to brain damage. But without the victim dying, it is not a homicide, but a violent assault and attempted homicide instead.
 
If you divide the homicide rate by the total incident rate, you get a measure of the “lethality” of the incidents. That is, the probability that a gun related violent assault will lead to death. This metric has been unusually high in DC over the past year. The equation would look something like this:
 
Lethality = Homicides/Overall Assault with a dangerous weapon
              = Homicides/(Homicides + Assault with a dangerous weapon)
 
Comparing the statistics from 2017 and 2018 we see an interesting change.
Picture
 Table credit: DCMPD, https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance
 
For 2017, the percentage of assaults that led to death was 116/(116+1861)*100% = 5.8%
 
For 2018, the percentage of assaults that led to death was 160/(160+1674)*100% = 8.7%
 
This jump helps explain the rise of homicides during a year that say a decrease in violent crime.
 
How can we account for this? Some of it is just blind luck. A bullet hits an artery instead of grazing the shoulder. A response time is a little longer and the person’s life is lost. As hard as it can be to maintain a positive image of everything going on, sometimes a brief reminder of other positive trends (like that of violent crime decreasing) can give us the fortitude to continue, knowing that we can in fact make a difference. 
1 Comment
essayontime review link
9/13/2019 11:50:53 pm

Homicide exists because people have been faulty. Clearly it was never anyone's intention and yet they are still held accountable. Not that they shouldn't, but I feel if we are to really tackle this issue head on, we need to look at the whole picture and take a closer look at other factors which had more to do than a criminal being faulty. At what point in humanity did we all start developing people with very little tolerance among each other? Where have we gone wrong? Are we all just becoming more and more Godless by the hour?

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    Nick Luhring

    ROOT Inc. organizer writes about issues that contribute to emotional healing from gun violence.

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