Murder Rates Drop In Michigan

For the last twenty-five years, Michigan and Detroit specifically have seen a lot of violent crime. For decades Detroit and Flint have been listed in the top 10 list of Americas most Violent cities based on crime rates. Thankfully Detroit has seen murder rates begin to drop and in 2018 have had the lowest murder rate since 1966. Detroit is not the only area that has dropped in murder rates though as there is a slight drop between murders between 2008 and 2018 and many more arrests being made.

This group bar chart using data from Michigan’s yearly criminal stats report from 2008 examines the victims of murder and the number of people arrested for murder by race. In Michigan, there were 573 murders in 2008 and only 168 people arrested for murder. There are 393 African-American victims, 153 Caucasian victims, 1 Native-American, and 26 victims of unknown race. Comparably there are 113 African-Americans, 53 Caucasians, and 2 Unknown raced individuals who were arrested for murdering someone. It’s interesting to view that no Asians were arrested nor victims of murder in Michigan in 2008.

This data is important to analyze not only for comparing it to the later data of 2018 but because it shows a noticeable problem of unsolved murder cases in 2008. The number of arrests for murder only makes up less than 30% of the number of people who were killed. While there are many reasons why this number could be so drastic it is none the less unacceptable.

This group bar chart set up the same as before uses data from Michigan’s yearly criminal stats report from 2018 and examines the victims of murder and the number of people arrested for murder by race. In 2018 there were 550 people murdered in Michigan and 302 people arrested for murder. there are 376 African-American Victims, 151 Caucasians, 1 Asian, 2 Native-Americans, and 20 victims of unknown race. Once again Comparably there were 232 African-Americans, 64 Caucasians, 2 Native-Americans, and 4 people of unknown race arrested for murder in 2018.

There is a noticeable improvement in the number of people who have been arrested for murder compared to the number of victims after 10 years. In 2018 the number of people arrested for murder made close to 55% the number of victims that died. With that in mind, it means that more cases are being closed and victim’s families may finally be seeing closure.

Finally, I would like to compare the two graphs and see what progress has been made after ten years to shrinking the murder rate in Michigan. First, off the only categories of victims that have risen are Asian and Native Americans and only by 3 victims overall, One Asian and two Native Americans. This also means that the murder rates have shrunk for African-Americans by 17 people, Caucasians by 2 people, and Unknown race victims by 6. While not drastically improved and far from our ideal murder rate it’s still better and is only continuing to drop. It’s also very important to observe that many more cases are being closed than before with considerably more arrests being made in 2018 than in 2008. The number of arrested people has more than doubled between the two years from 153 arrests to 302. While there is a large area for improvement in lowering the murder rate and arresting more individuals that commit the crime, its good to know that some considerable progress is being made. Hopefully, in another 10 years, we will observe more critical progress being made.