Highest murder rates ever.

[WeSoHood]

How is this shocking? I was a newly discovered area that was practically lawless... and there was gold..

[Spade]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

Didn't Miami go through a period of incredible violence?

Yeah but that was during the height of the crack epidemic. Miami has calmed down. I believe Houston had the title a couple years back in the 80s. But the El Paso/Jaurez thing intrigues me. Jaurez has over 2000 murders and it's across a river from a city that has less than 10 so far. El Paso is one of the safest cities in the nation.

[frsno1]

Originally Posted by WeSoHood

How is this shocking? I was a newly discovered area that was practically lawless... and there was gold..

You were a newly discovered area???? j/k

Assuming you were talking about SF, I brought up that point to start this thread about how could a city with such a small population have so many murders, thus giving it such a high murder rate. To say the least, they are unofficial murder rates, but I have never seen a city or neighborhood with even an "unofficial" murder rate that high.

[Thomas R.]

Unmarried males 16-35 are, I believe, the main source of murder so a place dominated by those will often be violent. Particularly if there is a good deal of alcohol use. (Meth, cocaine, and opiates can also be a factor but of those I think only opiates was a "player" in 19th c. California) Although their stats in that year were weirdly high so the transient "boom" nature of the place at the time was presumably also a factor.

Granted there are towns with high numbers of unmarried young men that aren't too violent, but I think often times such places are military or college towns.