Talk:List of cities by homicide rate

Mexico is at war according to another article...
The list of ongoing conflicts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_drug_war listed as one of the ongoing wars. Wouldn't this disqualify mexico from appearing on this list?

What is the value of this list? Why does it have the restrictions of having over 300k people and the cities not being at war? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.160.46.30 (talk) 00:35, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Metropolitan versus City proper populations
A quick check of population sample sets proves this chart to be misleading. For example- the population of Caracas is given as the metropolitan number (city proper plus surrounding communities) while the population of Baltimore is given as city proper only and does not include surrounding communities. This greatly inflates the per capita rates for US cities as these metropolitan areas have significantly greater and safer communities outside their city proper than their Latin American counterparts. I have updated the Baltimore MD figure to show this tremendous difference. This now includes all metropolitan data including homicides in both the city proper and the surrounding 3-4 counties. 2601:14F:C200:96DF:0:0:0:6123 (talk) 12:39, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
 * That's a really interesting point, and I think it speaks to a potential weakness in the methodology - it's not clear what counts as a city, and it's not even consistent within countries. However, the changes you're making are original research, particularly synthesis. We can have a bigger discussion about how to address this, but changing the data in the list is not the way to go. -- Irn (talk) 02:47, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
 * I see that the data has been adjusted back to the original numbers- but this is not even an accurate reflection of the size of the cities listed- regardless of where the political boundaries are drawn. The fact is, it is clear what is a city and what is not a city.  Rural areas are not included in cities.  Contiguous urban areas are. Yes- cities do grow and shrink.  Whoever has authored this list has purposely manipulated the data to affect an inaccurate portrayal of US cities- which would not even make the list with an apples to apples comparison.  Caracas is a city of 2.9 million people just as Baltimore is a city of 2.7 million people.  St. Louis is a city of 2.8 million.  So absolutely no one should use this list as a meaningful ranking of homicide rates for metropolitan areas.  If you want to compare principal municipalities- which would still be a meaningful comparison- Baltimore is a principal municipality of 620,000 just as Caracas is a principal municipality of 1.9 million. So either adjust the data or remove the page.173.64.118.133 (talk) 14:24, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

To echo some points already made: let me talk about two data points that I'm familiar with: Detroit, MI and Kingston, Jamaica. Detroit's population is listed here as 677,116, which only refers to the population of the actual political jurisdiction that is the city of Detroit (when you include its vast suburbs, the population of the entire metro area swells up to something like 4 million). And Kingston's population is somehow listed at about 1.2 million, even though Wikipedia itself puts the Kingston metro area population at just 662,000 (source: a). Where is this 1.2 million figure coming from? And of what value can this article possibly be when we aren't making apples-to-apples comparisons? 198.151.206.196 (talk) 16:54, 13 September 2017 (UTC)some_guy

Puerto Rico - what is a "country"?
There are users who think Puerto Rico doesn't count as a country, specifically for the purpose of this page because of a political statement they want to make about how the president of the US is responsible for hurricanes.

Every other article that has listings of countries includes Puerto Rico as a country. Puerto Rico is not a sovereign nation, but it is a country, and whether or not that means it should be accounted on this list *and other lists like it* is something that should applied consistently across Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.130.173.243 (talk) 06:40, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Puerto Rico is very explicitly an unincorporated US territory, and in no way a country. If you look at say List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate, the column is "Country (or dependent territory, subnational area, etc.)", and in the raw UNODC data, it's titled "Country/territory". The article should either have the column name changed, or incorporate San Juan into the United States. -Kieran (talk) 19:39, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
 * To follow up, I've taken the simpler approach of leaving all the wording as "by country" and setting the country for San Juan to the USA. -Kieran (talk) 19:45, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The table does not include Puerto Rico's flag only but an expandable tab, is this intentional? Marathonian (talk) 18:18, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

The fact that Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the U.S. rather than an incorporated territory makes it appropriate to list it as a "country". It is not an independent state like Switzerland or China, but that is not always what "country" means. An incorporated territory of the U.S. is within the boundaries of the U.S., as Alaska and Hawaii were before their admissions to the Union as separate states or as the Northwest territory was from 1787 until 1803 (in 1803 the eastern part of that territory became the state of Ohio and the rest remained an organized incorporated territory). An unincorporated territory is a country outside the boundaries of the U.S. but under U.S. jurisdiction, as Puerto Rico has been since the conclusion of the war of 1898 against Spain. Michael Hardy (talk) 22:26, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
 * It's a pretty old discussion now, but for what it's worth, the definitive 1902 US Supreme Court ruling is fairly clear. "In the case of De Lima v. Bidwell, just decided, we held that, upon the ratification of the treaty of peace with Spain, Porto Rico ceased to be a foreign country, and became a territory". "The result of what has been said is that, while in an international sense Porto Rico was not a foreign country, since it was subject to the sovereignty of and was owned by the United States, it was foreign to the United States in a domestic sense". Since Wikipedia is an international encyclopaedia, it seems most appropriate to use the international sense. -Kieran (talk) 22:33, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Time to update?
There is a new study with up to date info: http://seguridadjusticiaypaz.org.mx/files/estudio.pdf 2804:14D:5C54:8988:807F:1D2E:30B0:C186 (talk) 00:08, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
 * The pdf seems to only list the top 10 and doesn't provide any sources. Potadao (talk) 11:20, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
 * In the website they provide a complete list, just not in that PDF exactly. They also provide a methodology (in Spanish, search for "metodología") that is, in my opinion, sound. (Indeed, in the methodology they refer to the local government data sources utilized. I can attest that the Brazilian numbers are official. Peer review is pending for other sources, but it looks sounds to me.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2804:14D:BE84:12E5:3CEE:A10E:85BB:73EB (talk) 16:46, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

This list is seriously out of date, and worse, was not up to date to begin with.
First of all, the sources cited were not very good. Saying "the most dangerous cities in 2020", when your data ended in 2019 is misleading. And some cities have had major changes since then. Acapulco is a good example - in 2019, Acapulco had 592 murders (not going to quibble with the 600 posted). In 2020 that number dropped to 358. That per capita rate of 45.3 (from 75) should drop them to #26 on the list.

http://www.semaforo.com.mx/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.242.147.70 (talk) 20:34, 20 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Related: Portland homicides set record at 93 as shootings continue.    Published: Nov. 25, 2022, 7:55 p.m. https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2022/11/portland-homicides-set-record-at-93-as-shootings-continue.html &#32; Grace and peace thru the Lord Jesus (talk) 14:22, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 November 2022
Washington D.C. did not have 2,608 homicides in 2021 as this page claims. Although homicide was up that year, the number reached 227, far below that stated here. https://www.npr.org/local/305/2022/01/03/1069895511/d-c-saw-227-homicides-in-2021-as-murders-increased-for-the-fourth-year-in-a-row 2601:C4:C200:CBD0:A01D:591D:B982:B04F (talk) 20:06, 16 November 2022 (UTC)


 * , was this a typo on your part? I don't have access to the source you used. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:03, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
 * ScottishFinnishRadish - The NPR source above does say it's 227, and the Bloomberg source provided in the article doesn't even mention a number for Washington, D.C., so I've updated it. Also, I warmly recommend Spaywall to bypass paywall blocks, it works best as a browser extension :) Also, 9000+?? I was wondering how I always saw your name while going through the edit requests! Actualcpscm (talk) 23:18, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Way more than 9000 now, probably closer to 12 or 13k. I'm editing from my phone right now, and mobile chrome isn't a fan of browser extensions, but I'll let that in mind for my computer. Thanks! ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:27, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
 * The source requires you to register to access it. Also, it seems that I may have inputted the wrong population. I am changing that now. zsteve21 (talk) 23:20, 16 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting wait blue.svg In progress: An editor is implementing the requested edit. We're figuring it out! Thanks for pointing this out. Actualcpscm (talk) 23:23, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Recent changes + selection criteria
Thanks for the efforts maintaining this list, but I am worried that the list as it currently stands lacks a set of reasonable selection criteria; the previous version only had the top 50 cities and only those with over 300k population. The current iteration of the list seems rather indiscriminate right now, as cities with as low as 0.85 (!!) murders per 100k making the list (that's less than the vast majority of entire countries), and towns as small as 38k included (where one freak incident in one year would massively skew the results.)

The other issue with this is that it creates a severe statistical bias that makes things like the "by region" list meaningless, as the inclusion of cities is no longer based on their actual homicide rate but rather whether we have found articles mentioning their murder rate. I'd even say that the list as it stands is misleading, as it implies that all of the #66-#96 most dangerous cities are American, but in all likelihood that is not true and it is just that we lack data from other countries. The murder rates in cities in Mexico obviously do not range from 202 to 35 then suddenly jump all the way to 10; if we included every city the list would look very different and tell a different story.

I think this article would be much better with a clearly defined scope that we can ensure accuracy and comprehensiveness within. Including every municipality in every country with a murder rate of above 0.85/100k is clearly entirely infeasible. My personal preference is to return to the original scope, which is after all what one of the main sources for this article (and the only one that actually considers the entire world) uses. eviolite  (talk)  02:52, 28 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello, thanks for your thoughts. Unfortunately, the revision before my first edit on this article only dependent on two sources, one which doesn't work and one which shares data from 2018, and things could go wrong if that source suddenly stopped working. I would prefer using the latest data which I believe would reflect the entire world more. However, if the article should only include cities with a reasonable minimum population (like 100k), that is fine by me.
 * In addition to this, I could only find sources in which most of them displays the murder rate, although multiple sources show different statistics for the same city in the same year. I believe it would be appropriate to change the title to "List of cities by murder rate". At the moment, as you have stated, the list is very incomplete. I have just found a new source which has lots of cities, but I currently may not have the time to do that work.
 * My aim/goal is to have at least 500 cities in the list by the end of the year (33 days left at the time of writing this), which I think would improve the accuracy and comprehensiveness compared to having a pretty small number of cities with data that is from 4 years ago. I'm not sure about the purpose of why the "by region" list (originally 'by country') was created, but it happens to exist before I first came here. Anyway, with this discovered source, I would soon continue to expand this incomplete list but you are free to make any other explained edits and contributions to this list. zsteve21 (talk) 21:02, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi "Reflecting the entire world" is an unreasonable goal in my opinion. Having 500 cities may help, but it would still be misleading unless you can show that they are the exact 500 cities with the highest homicide rate, which is basically impossible to guarantee given the lack of a global list.  I understand the noble goal of further expanding the list, but I don't think this page needs it (see WP:INDISCRIMINATE). In my opinion, the purpose of this page should be to list specifically the cities with the highest homicide rate, rather than to catalogue data from a bunch of random cities. This is consistent with other "List of [x] by [x]" articles and is what sources actually discuss as a whole. At the very least, if you are just adding whatever you can find, I would highly recommend removing the rank column as, again, that is inaccurate and misleading.
 * Regarding the concern about relying on two sources: this is not that big of a problem in my opinion as the sources get automatically archived. The notability of this list was established in an AfD discussion which seemed to think it was fine to have those sources, and again I think citinga known comprehensive worldwide list is desirable.
 * Also: I noticed that Homicide in world cities seems to be more like what you are going after, presenting statistics for many cities rather than a theoretical "ranking", so it may be more helpful to have the more general stuff go there (though in my opinion that page is also... less than ideal.) eviolite   (talk)  00:46, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

June 2023 Solve the problem of the single source and outdated data
Continuing from above and this discussion at I went bold, reworded the para to show the actual date as 2019 and tagged it as single-sourced. I emphasised the data actually is just from The Citizen Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice Mexico City advocacy group. How to fix this further or perhaps restructure the scope of this article can be discussed further based on the above discussion. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 11:50, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Rectify
There are more current data for Brazilian cities by homicide rate 2021 in "Lista de cidades brasileiras por taxa de homicídios" https://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_cidades_brasileiras_por_taxa_de_homic%C3%ADdios Williamferreiraam (talk) 02:50, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

The data here is outdated and some of it is flat out wrong.
First off, Statistica is trash when it comes to data. Always has been. Secondly, naming something as 2022 data when you are citing sources from 2020-21 is deceptive.

Acapulco's murder rate in 2022 was 437/55.3  Cancun 354/53.5 Colima? You took the STATE numbers, not the city (city was 285/194) Zamora 327/176

http://www.semaforo.com.mx/ for all data. 74.105.134.229 (talk) 14:12, 27 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Agreed, this page has clear political purpose and is flat out wrong, declaring 2022 rankings obtained from sketchy internet data from 2018 is purposefully deceptive. The page should be updated or deleted. Diegales1 (talk) 19:20, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
 * You're right about the data being wrong and misleading. I've made changes, continue the discussion at . Ugog Nizdast (talk) 11:52, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Seems better, I'll try to find better sources to propose a change in the figures displayed. Diegales1 (talk) 23:19, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request
Without wading into any discussion on appropriateness of sources, the page currently uses 2022 data from the Citizen Council for the top 50 ranking (geoenlace.net/seguridadjusticiaypaz/archivo/d86357_e0cc9ce8f0.pdf). Request to update source as well as the heading and body to reflect that the data is from 2022, not 2019. That link also details their methodology.

Also, some miscellaneous errors somebody made in transferring the data from that source: - Nelson Mandela Bay - should be 1,205,484 inhabitants - Detroit - should be 632,464 inhabitants - Guayaquil - should be 3,217,353 inhabitants - Buenaventura - should be 111 homicides You can double check with the per 100,000 numbers since they don't add up for these entries.

Also, I do not see the point of the "Other statistics" list either but y'all can figure that one out Spinelcrowned (talk) 20:10, 28 July 2023 (UTC)


 * - Please format requests in "Please change X to Y" format. estar8806 (talk) ★ 00:49, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Adding rankings to 'Other statistics'
It would be nice if the Other statistics section also had rankings. People may feel this is not appropriate given the different years of each row. However I think people can decide for themselves how relevant a study/poll from say, two years ago is. I only have two edits actually connected to my account, so I can't make this edit myself.

While I'm writing this, I see Spinelcrowned mentioned the "Other statistics" list. I think this is a nice table to have, since I'm sure that for example, New Orleans would still appear on the Rankings if they were polled today. Maybe it could be renamed something like "Rankings from prior years" or something like that. BurgerVillain (talk) 19:03, 30 October 2023 (UTC)