high homicide enclave, 01/01/08-06/15/08

i just got done updating my custom google maps of the la county homicide statistics from 01/01/2008-06/14/2008.

since the beginning of the year there have been 362 homicides in los angeles county.


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so far this year the homicide rate is actually down 5% for the year. this time last year there were 372 homicides in la county.


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the crazy thing is that crime is down year over year since 1992.

Homicides, L.A. County

1991 2,054
1992 2,113
1993 2,070
1994 1,816
1995 1,789
1996 1,535
1997 1,295
1998 1,053
1999 965
2000 1,076
2001 1,161
2002 1,231
2003 1,142
2004 1,131
2005 1,152
2006 1,085
2007 968*
*estimate based on annualized figures, Jan-Aug. '07

and as the unemployment goes down so does the homicide rate rate
Unemployment rate

1991 8
1992 9.9
1993 10
1994 9.3
1995 8
1996 8.3
1997 6.9
1998 6.6
1999 5.9
2000 5.4
2001 5.7
2002 6.8
2003 7
2004 6.5
2005 5.3
2006 4.7
2007 4.8*
*estimate, avg through Aug.

violent crime is also down.

Violent Crime Rates 1989-2005


yet 15 people were killed in weekend homicides between june 6th-8th. did you hear about it? why do you think that is?

la times reporter jill leovy explains the concept of the "high homicide enclave"

A crowd of at least 100 gathered Thursday for a candlelight vigil to mark the driveby-shooting death of 15-year-old Dovon Harris in the Nickerson Gardens housing project. LAPD Southeast Capt. Rick Jacobs announced a suspect was in custody. The crowd cheered and clapped.

Unlike many homicides cases reported on The Homicide Report, this one benefited from numerous witnesses cooperating.

As covered previously here, the reluctance of witnesses to cooperate with police, especially in the context of black and Latino urban poverty, is central to high-homicide dynamics.

It works like this: Witness reluctance affords killers impunity, and gives them power to essentially become underworld lords, ruling lawless ethnic enclaves created by the inexorable calculus of housing segregation and poverty. Within such enclaves, violence becomes a kind of currency that people ignore at their peril, and formal legal protection does not exist. Men and boys, in particular, experience extreme pressure to demonstrate they too are capable of violence. If they appear weak, they risk falling on the wrong side of the violent transactions that organize this underworld. They must walk tough, talk tough, and cultivate a reputation for being dangerous if provoked.

Elsewhere in America, it's not like that. In, say, Beverly Hills or Encino, people dwell in a world where the state has a monopoly on violence. Violence and power are still inseparable, but the violence is inchoate--conserved within the apparatus of the state. The state's monopoly on violence remains invisible, but it governs conflicts. When people cross each other, as they inevitably do, the legal apparatus of the state influences how their quarrels are resolved. Business or neighbor disputes end up in civil courts. Fights over girls or insults play out around unspoken calculations of possible state intervention: Kill your rival, and you're likely to end up in jail. Better to just punch him, or show him up at the next office meeting.

But in a world where the state has lost its authority, and power is diffused among violent individuals, even the mildest, most passive individuals must make uneasy compromises with killers, and the percentage of people--especially men--who actively embrace violence to resolve conflicts expands.

This reporter has interviewed many churchgoing, working, middle-class homeowners--fathers and mothers with no criminal histories and little inclination toward violence--who, nonetheless, seriously consider lethal retaliation when their sons are killed in South Los Angeles. They are not insane for doing so. They are not simply depraved individuals with a yen for "senseless violence," to quote that overused cliche. Rather, they are human beings who have suffered real injury in a context where state power is missing in action. They are experiencing the ultimate interpersonal conflict in a world where witnesses don't cooperate, cases go unsolved, and those who hurt others gain power. Think about your son's killer living near you, enjoying impunity, even exerting influence, and you may see their point of view. Now imagine how the same thoughts might be resolved in the mind of a teenage younger brother of that same murder victim.