Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

- Gang-related homicides are less than 20% of all homicides in the US.

- Gang-related homicides includes the homicides of innocent bystanders of gang-related shootings.

- Over half of all homicide victims are non-white.

These three facts make it obvious that well above 60% of all non-white homicides are NOT “gang-targeted or -involved”.

If it is true that 80% [EDIT: not true (I misread stat in another comment) but gist of argument still stands] of non-white cases go unsolved, then more than 50% of all unsolved non-white homicides are NOT gang-related in any way.

And this is an extremely conservative estimate. Just fixing unfavorable rounding adjusts the percentage of unrelated unsolved homicides to above 65%.

Given that, it doesn’t seem wise to presume gang-involvement on the part of non-white unsolved homicide victims solely on the basis of them being… non-white unsolved homicide victims.



> If it is true that 80% of non-white cases go unsolved [...]

It's not nearly that bad. Around 40-50% are solved. There are around 30% more non-white homicides than there are white homicides per year in the US, which means that the overall homicide solve rate is closer to the non-white solve rate than to the white solve rate.


Thanks for catching my mistake and updating. I misread earlier comment.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: