(08-06-2010, 05:11 PM)kandrathe Wrote: I was using Nationmaster (0.0111538 per 1,000). The Netherlands rate hovers above and below 1/100,000.
Well, I was just using your numbers and dividing by the known population. Not sure how nationmaster does it, nor for what year that is. It's higher than any other statistic I've seen, although none are very high.
Quote:The 5.25 million number you are using for MN population was probably from the 2000 Census, whereas current projections are upwards of about 5.6 million, but somewhere around 1/100,000 seems right. I'm just citing exactly what is listed from my source, "The crime rate for homicide in 2009 was 1 per 100,000 population." on page 16.
They may have been rounding - precisely 1 per 100,000 is a conveniently exact number. 1.27 per 100,000 is not totally dissimilar (it would mean only 14 extra murders) but when comparing degrees of safety amongst extremely safe countries, 0.27 is quite a lot.
My Minnesota population number of 5.25 million was from Wikipedia, which apparently took their numbers from the US Census Bureau. That is what pops up when you google "minnesota population", from the same source. They give the year 2000 number as 4.9 million. I have not seen 5.6 million anywhere.
Quote:There are still a few rough neighborhoods, where poverty, gangs, drugs, and crime are more prevalent, but generally, things are safer than they ever have been around here.
True. In fact, crime almost everywhere has been decreasing steadily for a long time, in the big picture. There are occasional blips, and things like population density to account for, but in the first world, you're less likely to be murdered today than at just about any point in history.
-Jester