This Is the American City With the Highest Murder Rate

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 19, 10:30AM EST

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This Is the American City With the Highest Murder Rate — © FlyMint Agency / iStock via Getty Images

According to Pew Research, the murder rate in America rose by 30% between 2019 and 2020. It was the largest increase since 1905. Most states posted increases. The highest was Montana, up 84%. The same study showed that guns were involved in 77% of murders.

NPR points out that no adequate reasons have been given for the jump but that the COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest may be among the culprits.

Currently, the national murder rate stands at 6.5 homicides for every 100,000 people. In many U.S. cities, however, murder rates are far higher than the national average. Using data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 24/7 Wall St. identified the U.S. metropolitan area with the most murders. The 291 metros were ranked on their murder rate (that is, the number of reported murders for every 100,000 people in 2020) to identify the top city.

The majority of the metro areas with the highest homicide rates are located in southern states, including five in Louisiana alone.
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Despite the rise in homicide rates nationwide, murder is by far the least common form of violent crime, accounting for less than 2% of it. Still, in most of the metro areas with the highest homicide rates, the overall violent crime rate exceeds the national rate of 399 incidents per 100,000 people.

To determine the city with the most murders, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed murder figures from the FBI’s 2020 Uniform Crime Report (UCR). The rate of murders per 100,000 people was calculated using population data from the FBI.

Limited data were available in the 2020 UCR for areas in Alabama, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Illinois, though these places were not excluded from analysis. Only metro areas for which the boundaries defined by the FBI match the boundaries as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau were considered.

Additional information on the violent crime rate is also from the 2020 FBI UCR.

The city with the highest murder rate was Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Here are the details:

Murder rate: 27.7 per 100,000 people
Murders reported in 2020: 24 (tied for 97th highest)
Violent crimes per 100,000 people: 1,097.8 (fourth highest)
Population within reporting jurisdiction: 86,540 (13th lowest)

Click here to see all the American metros with the highest murder rates.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.