![]() “The big thing about Al Capone and his gang was they introduced the ‘Tommy gun,’” says Leigh Bienen, director of the Chicago Historical Homicide Project at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. But back then, the typical hardware looked a little different. In 1926 the majority of homicides - a little over 70 percent - were committed with guns. The crime-related guns recovered most often by the Chicago Police Department were 9mm handguns followed by. What weapons were used?Īccording to an analysis of Chicago police records by the University of Chicago Crime Lab, 90 percent of Chicago homicides in 2016 involved guns. That is, the comparison is revealing, but not so precise.ĭespite the woolliness involved in comparing Capone-era homicide rates with today’s, though, it’s still useful to compare the two eras when it comes to how people were killed, why they were killed, and who was killed. For another, without cross-referencing the historical numbers with coroner’s reports, newspaper articles and state’s attorney’s documents, for example, you can’t do much more than just take those numbers at face value. ![]() For one thing, you naturally introduce error when you compare data generated by different agencies. ![]() That’s the big picture, but several sources warn against this kind of quantitative comparison - or they suggest taking it with a grain of salt. It’s also important to point out that murder rates in the Capone era and last year are both lower than rates seen during the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. But it wasn’t much lower than rates seen in the past dozen years or so. The average homicide rate during Capone’s reign was about 12 murders per 100,000 residents, according to numbers collected from bulletins of the Chicago Crime Commission and the Illinois Crime Survey of 1929.īottom line: The homicide rate was probably lower during the Capone era than in 2016. The period between 1925 to 1931 includes the period when Capone was considered the chieftain of Chicago’s gangland, and it ends with his imprisonment. And she’s not alone: A good number of people have that impression.īut it’s not true, and here’s how we know. Her question implies that violence - murder in particular - in Chicago today is the worst it’s been since, perhaps, the 1920s. According to Census Bureau records, Capone’s Chicago had about 3.3 million residents, while around 2.7 million residents lived in the city in 2016. That’s important because you’d expect a city with a larger population to have more homicides what really matters is how many people are killed per a certain portion of the populace. Homicide rates often represent the number of reported homicides per 100,000 residents. Lastly, homicide rates allow the best apples-to-apples comparisons when adjusting for population. When someone is killed, there’s a body, and sooner or later someone is going to notice it. Second, homicides are less likely to go unreported. When comparing violence across time in Chicago, there are two reasons to use homicide rates, as opposed to figures such as shootings or “violent crimes.” First, from a legal standpoint, murder is the most serious violent crime. ![]()
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