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Five pct of U.S. counties produce 73 pct of all murders: study

A new study published by the US Crime Prevention Research Center has found that murders in the United States are highly concentrated in a small number of counties.

In 2020, 52 percent of counties had no murders. 68 percent of counties had no more than one murder and they accounted for only 2.6 percent of all murders in the country.

On the other side of the spectrum were the five percent of counties which accounted for 73 percent of murders. This concentration of murders is the highest it has been in over a decade. The one percent of worst counties drove that increase. The share of murders in these counties rose over this period, despite their populations did not change.

CNN reported that the U.S. homicide rate rose 30 percent between 2019 and 2020, calling the surge “the highest increase recorded in modern history.”

The worst five areas in the country for homicides are:

-Cook County, Illinois

-Los Angeles County, California

-Harris County (Houston)

-Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania

-New York City

“Murder isn’t a nationwide problem,” CPRC President John R. Lott Jr. wrote in the report. “It’s a problem in a small set of urban areas and even in those counties murders are concentrated in small areas inside them, and any solution must reduce those murders.”

Overall, 70 percent of the counties across the entire U.S. are responsible for only three percent of annual homicides.

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