America's 'Murder Capital' Is Having Its Least Deadly Year in Half a Century

When the FBI released its annual Uniform Crime Report for 2012 back in September of this year, every blogger and general assignment reporter dutifully looked up which city had the most murders, then promptly crowned it the "murder capital" of America. Last year's leader in homicides was Chicago, with 500. Shortly after the report came out, I wrote a critique of the whole concept of a murder capital. It's a reductionist way to look at any city's battle with violent crime, and the fact that the rate isn't pegged to population makes it almost meaningless. (Chicago may have had the most homicides in 2012, but Flint, Michigan, had the most per capita.)

But my favorite critique of bestowing the title "murder capital" is that it's almost always obsolete by the time it's doled out. In September 2013, Chicago was named the most murderous city in the U.S. based on a data collection period that ended in Dec. 2012. Did something happen to the murder rate in the intervening eight months? Why, yes. And now that we're just a few weeks away from the end of 2013, NBC Chicago reports that the city is on track to have its lowest homicide rate since 1965: