This Is The State With The Most Murders

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 14, 11:04AM EST

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Pew Research data show that the murder rate in the U.S. rose 30% last year. It was the largest jump since 1905. The homicide rate in 2020 was 7.8 per 100,000 people. Other observations were that firearms were used in 77% of murders. and only 54% of murders were solved.

Among the most troubling things about the jump is that experts cannot point to one reason. Two reasons given but without entirely solid foundations are the COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest across the country contributed.

Using data from the FBI, 24/7 Wall St. identified the state with the most murders. States are ranked on their murder rate — or the number of reported murders for every 100,000 people in 2020.

The states with the lowest homicide rates tend to be concentrated in the Northeast, particularly in the New England region. Meanwhile, the states with the highest rates of deadly violence are disproportionately located in the South.

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Despite the rise in homicide nationwide, murder is by far the least common form of violent crime — accounting for less than 2% of all criminal violence nationwide. Still, states with higher-than-average homicide rates typically have high overall violent crime rates as well.

The state with the highest murder rate was Louisiana. Here are the details.
> Murder rate: 15.8 per 100,000 people
> Murders reported in 2020: 734 (11th highest)
> Violent crimes per 100,000 people: 639.4 (5th highest)
> Population within reporting jurisdiction: 4,645,318 (25th highest)

News 8 gave one of the reasons the figure in Louisiana is so high. Several of its largest cities have murder rates well above the state average, and these account for most of the horrible numbers. The state’s largest city, New Orleans, is among them. So are Baton Rouge and Lafeyette.

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

Limited data was available in the 2020 UCR for areas in Alabama, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, though these places were not excluded from analysis.

Additional information on the violent crime rate and the population within the jurisdictions reporting figures to the FBI are also from the 2020 FBI UCR.

Click here to read States With The Most Murders

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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.