State homicide rates vary considerably
A query of CDC’s WONDER database gave me the answer to these questions.
Mississippi had by far the highest homicide death rate of any state in 2023, more than 19 homicides per 100,000 population.
At 10.1, Maryland was a distant second, but still much higher than its neighbor, Pennsylvania, which came in somewhere around the middle with 7.6. New Jersey, another Pennsylvania neighbor, has half the homicide rate of Pennsylvania.
My next question? Why a ten-fold difference between Mississippi and New Hampshire, the state with the lowest homicide rate? And why are there major differences between neighboring states?
Data sources for state homicide rates
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is one of two government sources of homicide data in the U.S. The CDC uses data from death certificates completed by coroners and medical examiners.
The other source, the FBI crime database, relies on voluntary reporting by law enforcement agencies.
The CDC data, because it captures all recognized homicides, is a more complete source than one that relies on voluntary reports.
It is unclear if current or future CDC data will be as reliable as in the past, given mass firings and increasing politicization of the nation’s premier public health agency.
Does a state's death investigation system affect homicide reporting?
It doesn’t make sense that citizens of one U.S. state are inherently ten times more violent or murderous than those in other states. So why this variation? Factors such as differences in gun violence and socioeconomic factors likely contribute to disparity in homicide rates. But could there be another factor at play?
A Patchwork of Medicolegal Death Investigation Systems
Coroner and medical examiner systems are the two major categories of medicolegal death investigation systems in the U.S. In some counties and states, coroners and medical examiners are part of the law enforcement system while in others they are independent or part of a public health system.
Mississippi, for example, has a state medical examiner office that is part of the state’s health department. In practice, however, county medical examiners in the state’s 82 counties complete most death certificates and decide whether or not an autopsy is necessary.
New Hampshire also has a state medical examiner office, but it is a centralized system that carries out all medicolegal death investigations in the state and resides within the state Attorney General’s office. It’s worth noting that the chief medical examiner is nominated by the attorney general and “subject to direction and control by the attorney general in all matters relating to the enforcement of the criminal law.”
The few homicide reporting comparisons we have are limited to deaths-in-custody.
Evidence from in-custody deaths
As an alternative to government data sources, one study used the Associated Press’s Lethal Restraint database. It’s limited to “non-firearm, not in jail or prison” deaths.
The study found that coroners and sheriff-coroners were much less likely than medical examiners to mention force in cause-of-death statements for lethal restraint deaths.
A 2022 study looked at whether California’s sheriff-coroner offices had different death classification outcomes than non-sheriff-coroner offices.
There was “significantly greater underreporting of officer-involved deaths in sheriff-coroner counties … compared with non-sheriff-coroner counties.” The authors concluded that “disparities in officer-involved death reporting suggest political pressure may play a role in classifying deaths.”
Conclusions about state variability in homicide rates
Differences between states are just as likely to be due to undercounting in states with lower rates as to overcounting in states with higher rates.
Some of the difference may be attributable to the type of death investigation system and how closely it is aligned with law enforcement.
However, because we lack complete, standardized, and non-partisan homicide data, in 2026 we don’t know the truth about homicide rates in the United States.
Featured image credit: Robin McSkelly on Unsplash