An analysis from The New York Times shows a quarter of the largest 100 cities in the U.S. experienced significant increases in murder rates in 2015, compared with averages for the prior three years.
More than half of the spike was caused by seven cities: Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Milwaukee, Nashville, Tenn., and Washington, D.C. Chicago counted the most homicides in 2015 (488), St. Louis had the highest rate (59 per 100,000 residents) and Baltimore had the biggest increase (133 more than 2014), according to The New York Times.
The analysis is based on 30 years of data from the FBI and 2015 data from 100 police departments around the country. The newspaper's findings are in line with a recent study from the National Institute of Justice, according to the report. This study's author called the homicide rate increase "nearly unprecedented," according to The New York Times.
However, this view was tempered slightly in The New York Times'analysis, which notes the homicide increase is not universal. Murder rates did not change in 70 cities and it decreased in five cities, according to the report. At both a national level and in the seven cities that spiked, homicide rates are far below 1990s levels, according to the report.
Read more here about the cities that drove the increase in homicide rates.
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