Inroduction

I created this data set to investigate the factors related to violent crime across the states of the United States. The units of analysis are the 50 states, which excludes the District of Columbia because it is a statistical metropolitan area and not technically a state.

Violent Crime Source: The Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2023. “Crime in the United States: 2022.” Three types of violent crime were obtained from this source including homicide, robbery, and assault per 100,000.

Poverty Variable: U.S. Census, 2022. Poverty in the United States: 2022. Link to Census Report

Other Demographic Variables: Median Income, percentage of the state’s population residing in rural areas, percentage of people who had moved in the past 5 years, and whether the state was in the South (0=no, 1=yes) were obtained from the U.S. Census Data Tools App at Census Data Tools.

Death Penalty States: To examine whether states that utilize the death penalty have lower rates of murder than those states that do not utilize the death penalty, a dichotomous variable was obtained from the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice. This variable is coded 0 for those states that do not utilize the death penalty and 1 for those states that do. [Link to Bureau of Justice Statistics](https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/capital-punishment-2021-statistical-tables.

There is great variability in the rate of murder across the U.S. The low is in New Hampshire with a rate of .9 per 100,000. The high is in Louisiana with a rate of 12.3 per 100,000.

States Murder Rates

Is the death penalty a deterrent? states with the death penalty as a sanction generally have higher murder rates (mean = 5.18) compared to states without the death penalty (mean = 3.78).

Bar Graph of different types of violent crime

Robbery, burglary, and motor vehicle theft rates are typically higher in Southern and Western states, whereas assault rates do not appear to be affected as much by regional location.

There is a positive relationship between state rates of robbery and murder. States with higher rates of robbery typically have higher rates of murder.

Murder and Robert Rates

This reveals that poverty is concentrated in Southern states. Except for the plains states where robbery rates are low (e.g., South Dakota, Montana), robbery rates are not highly correlated with poverty.

Map