Murders and murder rate in Boston 2006
The Boston Police department released preliminary crime stats for 2006 that has the number of murders in Boston at 75 in 2006 for a homicide rate of roughly 12.5, assuming a population just shy of 600,000. There were 73 homicides in Boston in 2005.
Note: This post originally claimed there were 75 murders in Boston in 2005 and 74 in 2006. I think the Boston Globe made a similar error yesterday, and that’s probably where I go the 75 from. Judge for yourself:
After a fatal shooting yesterday, Brito’s slaying was one of 74 homicides in Boston in 2006 — a total just shy of the 75 last year that marked a 10-year high.
It appears that the Globe repeatedly reported the 75 figure for 2005. Where did that number come from?
On January 3, Boston Globe’s business columnist Steve Bailey mentioned what is usually the big unmentionable, namely how much higher the murder rate is among blacks than whites.
Seventy-four people were murdered in Boston last year, and 63 of them were black, according to the Boston Police Department. By comparison, Boston is a relatively safe place to be white: In all, only six non-Hispanic whites were murdered in the city in 2006.
I’m not sure how the Boston Police Department classifies blacks which makes it a little tricky to nail down the murder rate for Boston’s black population, but the homicide rate comes out very high even if the United States Census Bureau’s most expansive definition of blacks (”Black or African American alone or in combination with one or more other races” including Hispanic blacks) is used. Using that definition, Boston’s black population was 163,006 in 2000. 63 murders for a population of 163,006 yields a homicide rate of about 38.7, substantially higher than the 12.5 rate for all of the city.
Using the most restrictive definition of whites (”White alone, not Hispanic or Latino”) Boston’s white population was 291,561 in 2000, according to the 2000 Census. That translates to a murder rate of 2.1 for the city’s white population. I created the chart below using PowerPoint to illustrate the homicide rates for Boston in 2006:
