This interactive mapping tool, created for the 33N blog, displays homicides in the City of Atlanta between January 2007 and February 2017 by race/ethnicity and sex of the victim. The data for this tool was provided by the Washington Post as part of an investigative project which compiled information on 54,000 homicides in the U.S. to identify hot spots where homicides rates are high but arrests are low.

In 2023, the District of Columbia had the highest reported violent crime rate in the United States, with 1,150.9 violent crimes per 100,000 of the population. Maine had the lowest reported violent crime rate, with 102.5 offenses per 100,000 of the population. Life in the District The District of Columbia has seen a fluctuating population over the past few decades. Its population decreased throughout the 1990s, when its crime rate was at its peak, but has been steadily recovering since then. While unemployment in the District has also been falling, it still has had a high poverty rate in recent years. The gentrification of certain areas within Washington, D.C. over the past few years has made the contrast between rich and poor even greater and is also pushing crime out into the Maryland and Virginia suburbs around the District. Law enforcement in the U.S. Crime in the U.S. is trending downwards compared to years past, despite Americans feeling that crime is a problem in their country. In addition, the number of full-time law enforcement officers in the U.S. has increased recently, who, in keeping with the lower rate of crime, have also made fewer arrests than in years past.

Two previously released data collections from ICPSR are combined in this dataset: CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGH AND LOW CRIME NEIGHBORHOODS IN ATLANTA, 1980 (ICPSR 7951) and CRIME FACTORS AND NEIGHBORHOOD DECLINE IN CHICAGO, 1979 (ICPSR 7952). Information for ICPSR 7951 was obtained from 523 residents interviewed in six selected neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia. A research team from the Research Triangle Institute sampled and surveyed the residents. ICPSR 7952 contains 3,310 interviews of Chicago residents in eight selected neighborhoods. The combined data collection contains variables on topics such as residents' demographics and socioeconomic status, personal crime rates, property crime rates, neighborhood crime rates, and neighborhood characteristics. The documentation contains three pieces of information for each variable: variable reference numbers for both the Atlanta and Chicago datasets, the complete wording of the questions put to the respondents of each survey, and the exact wording of the coding schemes adopted by the researchers.

The data for this collection were gathered from the 1970 and 1980 Censuses and the Uniform Crime Reports for 1970 through 1980. The unit of analysis in this data collection is cities. Included are population totals by age group and arrest data for selected crimes by age group for Atlanta, Georgia, Chicago, Illinois, Denver, Colorado, Knoxville, Tennessee, San Jose, California, Spokane, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona. Population data by sex and age for all cities are contained in Part 4. The 123 variables provide data by age categories ranging from age 5 to age 69. Part 1, the arrest file for Atlanta and Chicago, provides arrest data for 1970 to 1980 by sex and age, ranging from age 10 and under to age 65 and over. The arrest data for other cities span two data files. Part 2 includes arrest data by sex for ages 15 to 24 for the years 1970 to 1980. Part 3 provides arrest data for ages 25 to 65 and over for the years 1970, 1975, and 1980. Arrest data are collected for the following crimes: murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, other assaults, arson, forgery, fraud, embezzlement, stolen property, vandalism, weapons, prostitution, other sex offenses, opium abuse, marijuana abuse, gambling, family offenses, drunk driving, liquor law violations, drunkenness, disorderly conduct, vagrancy, and all other offenses combined.