Saint Kitts and Nevis saw a murder rate of 65 per 100,000 inhabitants, making it the most dangerous country for this kind of crime worldwide as of 2023. Interestingly, El Salvador, which long had the highest global homicide rates, has dropped out of the top 20 after a high number of gang members have been incarcerated. Meanwhile, Celaya in Mexico was the most dangerous city for murders. Violent conflicts worldwide Notably, these figures do not include deaths that resulted from war or a violent conflict. While there is a persistent number of conflicts worldwide, resulting casualties are not considered murders. Partially due to this reason, homicide rates in Latin America are higher than those in Afghanistan or Syria. A different definition of murder in these circumstances could change the rate significantly in some countries. Causes of death Also noteworthy is that murders are usually not random events. In the United States, the circumstances of murders are most commonly arguments, followed by narcotics incidents and robberies. Additionally, murders are not a leading cause of death. Heart diseases, strokes and cancer pose a greater threat to life than violent crime.

In 2024, Colima in Mexico ranked as the world's most dangerous city with a homicide rate of 140 per 100,000 inhabitants. Seven of the 10 cities with the highest murder rates worldwide are all found in Mexico. The list does not include countries where war and conflict exist. Latin America dominate murder statistics Except for Mandela Bay, all the cities on the list are found in Latin America. Latin America also dominate the list of the world's most dangerous countries. Violence in Latin America is caused in great part by drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, and gang wars. Crime in South Africa Mandela Bay in South Africa is the only city outside Latin America among the 10 most dangerous cities worldwide. The country is struggling with extremely high levels of inequality, and is struggling with high levels of crime and power outages, harming the country's economy and driving more people into unemployment and poverty.

In 2022, the New Orleans-Metairie, LA metro area recorded the highest homicide rate of U.S. cities with a population over 250,000, at 27.1 homicides per 100,000 residents, followed by the Memphis, TN-MS-AR metro area. However, homicide data was not recorded in all U.S. metro areas, meaning that there may be some cities with a higher homicide rate.

St. Louis

St. Louis, which had a murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate of 11.6 in 2022, is the second-largest city by population in Missouri. It is home to many famous treasures such as the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, Washington University in St. Louis, the Saint Louis Zoo, and the renowned Gateway Arch. It is home to many corporations such as Monsanto, Arch Coal, and Emerson Electric. The economy of St. Louis is centered around business and healthcare, and in addition is home to ten Fortune 500 companies.

Crime in St. Louis

Despite all of this, St. Louis suffers from high levels of crime and violence. As of 2023, it was listed as the seventh most dangerous city in the world as a result of their extremely high murder rate. Not only does St. Louis have one of the highest homicide rates in the United States, it also reports one of the highest numbers of violent crimes. In spite of high crime levels, the GDP of the St. Louis metropolitan area has been increasing since 2001.

Intentional homicides are estimates of unlawful homicides purposely inflicted as a result of domestic disputes, interpersonal violence, violent conflicts over land resources, intergang violence over turf or control, and predatory violence and killing by armed groups. Intentional homicide does not include all intentional killing; the difference is usually in the organization of the killing. Individuals or small groups usually commit homicide, whereas killing in armed conflict is usually committed by fairly cohesive groups of up to several hundred members and is thus usually excluded.

California reported the largest number of homicides to the FBI in 2023, at 1,929 for the year. Texas recorded the second-highest number of murders, with 1,845 for the year. Homicide victim demographics There were a total of 19,252 reported homicide cases in the U.S. in 2023. When looking at murder victims by gender and ethnicity, the vast majority were male, while just over half of the victims were Black or African American. In addition, homicide victims in the United States were found most likely to be between the ages of 20 and 34 years old, with the majority of victims aged between 17 to 54 years old. Are murders up? In short, no – since the 1990s the number of murders in the U.S. has decreased significantly. In 1990, the murder rate per 100,000 people stood at 9.4, and stood at 5.7 in 2023. It should be noted though that the number of homicides increased slightly from 2014 to 2017, although figures declined again in 2018 and 2019, before ticking up once more in 2020 and 2021. Despite this decline, when viewed in international comparison, the U.S. murder rate is still notably high. For example, the Canadian homicide rate stood at 1.94 in 2023, while the homicide rate in England and Wales was even lower.

THIS DATASET WAS LAST UPDATED AT 8:10 PM EASTERN ON MARCH 24

OVERVIEW

2019 had the most mass killings since at least the 1970s, according to the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killings Database.

In all, there were 45 mass killings, defined as when four or more people are killed excluding the perpetrator. Of those, 33 were mass shootings . This summer was especially violent, with three high-profile public mass shootings occurring in the span of just four weeks, leaving 38 killed and 66 injured.

A total of 229 people died in mass killings in 2019.

The AP's analysis found that more than 50% of the incidents were family annihilations, which is similar to prior years. Although they are far less common, the 9 public mass shootings during the year were the most deadly type of mass murder, resulting in 73 people's deaths, not including the assailants.

One-third of the offenders died at the scene of the killing or soon after, half from suicides.

About this Dataset

The Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killings database tracks all U.S. homicides since 2006 involving four or more people killed (not including the offender) over a short period of time (24 hours) regardless of weapon, location, victim-offender relationship or motive. The database includes information on these and other characteristics concerning the incidents, offenders, and victims.

The AP/USA TODAY/Northeastern database represents the most complete tracking of mass murders by the above definition currently available. Other efforts, such as the Gun Violence Archive or Everytown for Gun Safety may include events that do not meet our criteria, but a review of these sites and others indicates that this database contains every event that matches the definition, including some not tracked by other organizations.

This data will be updated periodically and can be used as an ongoing resource to help cover these events.

Using this Dataset

To get basic counts of incidents of mass killings and mass shootings by year nationwide, use these queries:

Mass killings by year

Mass shootings by year

To get these counts just for your state:

Filter killings by state

Definition of "mass murder"

Mass murder is defined as the intentional killing of four or more victims by any means within a 24-hour period, excluding the deaths of unborn children and the offender(s). The standard of four or more dead was initially set by the FBI.

This definition does not exclude cases based on method (e.g., shootings only), type or motivation (e.g., public only), victim-offender relationship (e.g., strangers only), or number of locations (e.g., one). The time frame of 24 hours was chosen to eliminate conflation with spree killers, who kill multiple victims in quick succession in different locations or incidents, and to satisfy the traditional requirement of occurring in a “single incident.”

Offenders who commit mass murder during a spree (before or after committing additional homicides) are included in the database, and all victims within seven days of the mass murder are included in the victim count. Negligent homicides related to driving under the influence or accidental fires are excluded due to the lack of offender intent. Only incidents occurring within the 50 states and Washington D.C. are considered.

Methodology

Project researchers first identified potential incidents using the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR). Homicide incidents in the SHR were flagged as potential mass murder cases if four or more victims were reported on the same record, and the type of death was murder or non-negligent manslaughter.

Cases were subsequently verified utilizing media accounts, court documents, academic journal articles, books, and local law enforcement records obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Each data point was corroborated by multiple sources, which were compiled into a single document to assess the quality of information.

In case(s) of contradiction among sources, official law enforcement or court records were used, when available, followed by the most recent media or academic source.

Case information was subsequently compared with every other known mass murder database to ensure reliability and validity. Incidents listed in the SHR that could not be independently verified were excluded from the database.

Project researchers also conducted extensive searches for incidents not reported in the SHR during the time period, utilizing internet search engines, Lexis-Nexis, and Newspapers.com. Search terms include: [number] dead, [number] killed, [number] slain, [number] murdered, [number] homicide, mass murder, mass shooting, massacre, rampage, family killing, familicide, and arson murder. Offender, victim, and location names were also directly searched when available.

This project started at USA TODAY in 2012.

Contacts

Contact AP Data Editor Justin Myers with questions, suggestions or comments about this dataset at jmyers@ap.org. The Northeastern University researcher working with AP and USA TODAY is Professor James Alan Fox, who can be reached at j.fox@northeastern.edu or 617-416-4400.

There has been little research on United States homicide rates from a long-term perspective, primarily because there has been no consistent data series on a particular place preceding the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), which began its first full year in 1931. To fill this research gap, this project created a data series on homicides per capita for New York City that spans two centuries. The goal was to create a site-specific, individual-based data series that could be used to examine major social shifts related to homicide, such as mass immigration, urban growth, war, demographic changes, and changes in laws. Data were also gathered on various other sites, particularly in England, to allow for comparisons on important issues, such as the post-World War II wave of violence. The basic approach to the data collection was to obtain the best possible estimate of annual counts and the most complete information on individual homicides. The annual count data (Parts 1 and 3) were derived from multiple sources, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports and Supplementary Homicide Reports, as well as other official counts from the New York City Police Department and the City Inspector in the early 19th century. The data include a combined count of murder and manslaughter because charge bargaining often blurs this legal distinction. The individual-level data (Part 2) were drawn from coroners' indictments held by the New York City Municipal Archives, and from daily newspapers. Duplication was avoided by keeping a record for each victim. The estimation technique known as "capture-recapture" was used to estimate homicides not listed in either source. Part 1 variables include counts of New York City homicides, arrests, and convictions, as well as the homicide rate, race or ethnicity and gender of victims, type of weapon used, and source of data. Part 2 includes the date of the murder, the age, sex, and race of the offender and victim, and whether the case led to an arrest, trial, conviction, execution, or pardon. Part 3 contains annual homicide counts and rates for various comparison sites including Liverpool, London, Kent, Canada, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco.

The average for 2017 based on 35 countries was 1.7 homicides per 100,000 people. The highest value was in Russia: 9.2 homicides per 100,000 people and the lowest value was in Luxembourg: 0.3 homicides per 100,000 people. The indicator is available from 1990 to 2017. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

This dataset contains individual-level homicide and non-fatal shooting victimizations, including homicide data from 1991 to the present, and non-fatal shooting data from 2010 to the present (2010 is the earliest available year for shooting data). This dataset includes a "GUNSHOT_INJURY_I " column to indicate whether the victimization involved a shooting, showing either Yes ("Y"), No ("N"), or Unknown ("UKNOWN.") For homicides, injury descriptions are available dating back to 1991, so the "shooting" column will read either "Y" or "N" to indicate whether the homicide was a fatal shooting or not. For non-fatal shootings, data is only available as of 2010. As a result, for any non-fatal shootings that occurred from 2010 to the present, the shooting column will read as “Y.” Non-fatal shooting victims will not be included in this dataset prior to 2010; they will be included in the authorized-access dataset, but with "UNKNOWN" in the shooting column. Each row represents a single victimization, i.e., a unique event when an individual became the victim of a homicide or non-fatal shooting. Each row does not represent a unique victim—if someone is victimized multiple times there will be multiple rows for each of those distinct events. The dataset is refreshed daily, but excludes the most recent complete day to allow the Chicago Police Department (CPD) time to gather the best available information. Each time the dataset is refreshed, records can change as CPD learns more about each victimization, especially those victimizations that are most recent. The data on the Mayor's Office Violence Reduction Dashboard is updated daily with an approximately 48-hour lag. As cases are passed from the initial reporting officer to the investigating detectives, some recorded data about incidents and victimizations may change once additional information arises. Regularly updated datasets on the City's public portal may change to reflect new or corrected information. A version of this dataset with additional crime types is available by request. To make a request, please email dataportal@cityofchicago.org with the subject line: Violence Reduction Victims Access Request. Access will require an account on this site, which you may create at https://data.cityofchicago.org/signup. How does this dataset classify victims? The methodology by which this dataset classifies victims of violent crime differs by victimization type: Homicide and non-fatal shooting victims: A victimization is considered a homicide victimization or non-fatal shooting victimization depending on its presence in CPD's homicide victims data table or its shooting victims data table. A victimization is considered a homicide only if it is present in CPD's homicide data table, while a victimization is considered a non-fatal shooting only if it is present in CPD's shooting data tables and absent from CPD's homicide data table. To determine the IUCR code of homicide and non-fatal shooting victimizations, we defer to the incident IUCR code available in CPD's Crimes, 2001-present dataset (available on the City's open data portal). If the IUCR code in CPD's Crimes dataset is inconsistent with the homicide/non-fatal shooting categorization, we defer to CPD's Victims dataset. For a criminal homicide, the only sensible IUCR codes are 0110 (first-degree murder) or 0130 (second-degree murder). For a non-fatal shooting, a sensible IUCR code must signify a criminal sexual assault, a robbery, or, most commonly, an aggravated battery. In rare instances, the IUCR code in CPD's Crimes and Victims dataset do not align with the homicide/non-fatal shooting categorization: In instances where a homicide victimization does not correspond to an IUCR code 0110 or 0130, we set the IUCR code to "01XX" to indicate that the victimization was a homicide but we do not know whether it was a fi

In 2023, around 2,444 homicide victims in the United States were aged between 20 and 24 years old. A further 2,362 murder victims were between the ages of 30 and 34 years old. Most murder victims in the United States in 2023 were between the ages of 17 and 54 years old.

Number, percentage and rate (per 100,000 population) of homicide victims, by racialized identity group (total, by racialized identity group; racialized identity group; South Asian; Chinese; Black; Filipino; Arab; Latin American; Southeast Asian; West Asian; Korean; Japanese; other racialized identity group; multiple racialized identity; racialized identity, but racialized identity group is unknown; rest of the population; unknown racialized identity group), gender (all genders; male; female; gender unknown) and region (Canada; Atlantic region; Quebec; Ontario; Prairies region; British Columbia; territories), 2019 to 2023.

The average for 2017 based on 3 countries was 3 homicides per 100,000 people. The highest value was in the Philippines: 8.4 homicides per 100,000 people and the lowest value was in Singapore: 0.2 homicides per 100,000 people. The indicator is available from 1990 to 2017. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Number and rate (per 100,000 population) of homicide victims, Canada and Census Metropolitan Areas, 1981 to 2023.

The average for 2017 based on 9 countries was 11.9 homicides per 100,000 people. The highest value was in Brazil: 30.5 homicides per 100,000 people and the lowest value was in Chile: 4.3 homicides per 100,000 people. The indicator is available from 1990 to 2017. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Intentional homicides are estimates of unlawful homicides purposely inflicted as a result of domestic disputes, interpersonal violence, violent conflicts over land resources, intergang violence over turf or control, and predatory violence and killing by armed groups. Intentional homicide does not include all intentional killing; the difference is usually in the organization of the killing. Individuals or small groups usually commit homicide, whereas killing in armed conflict is usually committed by fairly cohesive groups of up to several hundred members and is thus usually excluded.

Number of homicide victims, by method used to commit the homicide (total methods used; shooting; stabbing; beating; strangulation; fire (burns or suffocation); other methods used; methods used unknown), Canada, 1974 to 2023.

In 2023, the District of Columbia had the highest rate of murder and non-negligent manslaughter in the United States with a rate of 39 murders or non-negligent manslaughters per 100,000 inhabitants. Louisiana, New Mexico, Alabama, and Tennessee rounded out the top five states with the highest murder rates.

Intentional homicides are estimates of unlawful homicides purposely inflicted as a result of domestic disputes, interpersonal violence, violent conflicts over land resources, intergang violence over turf or control, and predatory violence and killing by armed groups. Intentional homicide does not include all intentional killing; the difference is usually in the organization of the killing. Individuals or small groups usually commit homicide, whereas killing in armed conflict is usually committed by fairly cohesive groups of up to several hundred members and is thus usually excluded.

This dataset contains aggregate data on violent index victimizations at the quarter level of each year (i.e., January – March, April – June, July – September, October – December), from 2001 to the present (1991 to present for Homicides), with a focus on those related to gun violence. Index crimes are 10 crime types selected by the FBI (codes 1-4) for special focus due to their seriousness and frequency. This dataset includes only those index crimes that involve bodily harm or the threat of bodily harm and are reported to the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Each row is aggregated up to victimization type, age group, sex, race, and whether the victimization was domestic-related. Aggregating at the quarter level provides large enough blocks of incidents to protect anonymity while allowing the end user to observe inter-year and intra-year variation. Any row where there were fewer than three incidents during a given quarter has been deleted to help prevent re-identification of victims. For example, if there were three domestic criminal sexual assaults during January to March 2020, all victims associated with those incidents have been removed from this dataset. Human trafficking victimizations have been aggregated separately due to the extremely small number of victimizations. This dataset includes a " GUNSHOT_INJURY_I " column to indicate whether the victimization involved a shooting, showing either Yes ("Y"), No ("N"), or Unknown ("UKNOWN.") For homicides, injury descriptions are available dating back to 1991, so the "shooting" column will read either "Y" or "N" to indicate whether the homicide was a fatal shooting or not. For non-fatal shootings, data is only available as of 2010. As a result, for any non-fatal shootings that occurred from 2010 to the present, the shooting column will read as “Y.” Non-fatal shooting victims will not be included in this dataset prior to 2010; they will be included in the authorized dataset, but with "UNKNOWN" in the shooting column. The dataset is refreshed daily, but excludes the most recent complete day to allow CPD time to gather the best available information. Each time the dataset is refreshed, records can change as CPD learns more about each victimization, especially those victimizations that are most recent. The data on the Mayor's Office Violence Reduction Dashboard is updated daily with an approximately 48-hour lag. As cases are passed from the initial reporting officer to the investigating detectives, some recorded data about incidents and victimizations may change once additional information arises. Regularly updated datasets on the City's public portal may change to reflect new or corrected information. How does this dataset classify victims? The methodology by which this dataset classifies victims of violent crime differs by victimization type: Homicide and non-fatal shooting victims: A victimization is considered a homicide victimization or non-fatal shooting victimization depending on its presence in CPD's homicide victims data table or its shooting victims data table. A victimization is considered a homicide only if it is present in CPD's homicide data table, while a victimization is considered a non-fatal shooting only if it is present in CPD's shooting data tables and absent from CPD's homicide data table. To determine the IUCR code of homicide and non-fatal shooting victimizations, we defer to the incident IUCR code available in CPD's Crimes, 2001-present dataset (available on the City's open data portal). If the IUCR code in CPD's Crimes dataset is inconsistent with the homicide/non-fatal shooting categorization, we defer to CPD's Victims dataset. For a criminal homicide, the only sensible IUCR codes are 0110 (first-degree murder) or 0130 (second-degree murder). For a non-fatal shooting, a sensible IUCR code must signify a criminal sexual assault, a robbery, or, most commonly, an aggravated battery. In rare instances, the IUCR code in CPD's Crimes and Vi

Victims of gang-related homicides (total number of homicide victims; number of homicide victims - unknown gang-relation; number of homicide victims - known gang relation; number of gang-related homicide victims; percentage of gang-related homicide victims; rate (per 100,000 population) of gang-related homicide victims), Canada and regions, 1999 to 2023.