Study Finds Homicide Victims Tend To Be Criminals Too

Ambrose Bierce said, "There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable and praiseworthy." The news wouldn't be nearly as dreary if the newscaster read, "There were four felonious homicides today in Chicago, and six praiseworthy."


Analysis of murder data in Baltimore: 82% of Victims have criminal record, 81% of suspects have criminal record, average victim had 10.8 arrests

6 Apr , 2020

Clearly neither the victims nor perpetrators of murders are “normal” people — both groups are overwhelmingly criminals. Sixty-five percent of murders occurred for unknown reasons, and there were only 86 suspects for these 348 murders. Fifty-nine percent of murders occurred on the street.

Homicides in Baltimore largely involve criminals killing criminals. 82% of Victims have criminal record. The average victim had 10.8 arrests, with 4.1 of those being drug offenses. Sixty-seven percent had an arrest record for drugs. Forty-four percent had an arrest record for gun crimes. Twenty-nine percent of victims were clearly known by the police to be members of “drug crews or gang” members. Obviously, some of those 18% who didn’t have an arrest record were probably also engaging in or suspected of criminal activity.

Unfortunately, the information on the suspects is much less complete than it is for victims as Baltimore solves relatively few murders through arrest. With only 31 percent of murders result in an arrest, the most difficult cases for the police to solve involve gangs. Thus the 81% of suspects having a criminal record should be viewed as a severe underestimate.

This isn't much of a surprise to me. As for most running their mouth, debt, drugs, etc is usually the primary cause. Really though, as a criminal myself... You ain't gonna homicide me.

If someone does kill me I hope they aren't charged with anything. Tip your hat to that mfer and don't be mouthy to them.

New York has done the same thing for the last few years. When the crime rate went down, and street crime was all but disappearing, folks started to get more alarmed about the murder rate, even though it was the lowest in the last 50 years. They werent any longer worried about random street crime. The early to mid 1990's has 2200+ homicides a year, but in the last few years it hovered around 300 or so. With folks no longer afraid to walk the streets and be crime victims, the city wanted a way to lower the latest crime fear, that of getting shot. In NYC back in the mid 1990's, there was alot of innocent folks shot and killed. Alot of innocent victims of random criminal violence. The same thing is not true today.

So it now endeavors to alleviate the public fear by showing that most all the folks who get shot are known criminals with criminal records, and therefore, John Q Citizen without a criminal record should not be worried of meeting the same mishap. The implication is "look, he was known to be involved with dealing drugs, or gang crime, or was a known robber, so what could he have expected would happen?" The idea of If you dont lead that kind of life, you likely wont meet that kind of fate. The public is reassured.

That strategy was first used under Giuliani as mayor, for the folks who got shot by cops. They even released the sealed arrests, which should have been expunged from the system. Tyrone Jackson, 25 years old has 35 arrests. Again, it was done to imply that he was a bad guy who had it coming, so dont worry about it and just go out and live your life.