Philadelphia Increasing Murder Rate

            Our wonderful teacher, Mrs. Dunn, has given this project to us. This project is all about worrying less about yourself, and more about different issues that are going on in the world, or in this country, or even in your own neighborhoods. So with that I am going to jump right into the issue at hand. Now my issue is on somewhat of a bigger scale than just my own neighborhood, this issue includes all of Philadelphia, and that issue is, the continuously growing homicide rate in Philadelphia, and that among teens towards each other.

            This is an increasingly troubling topic, and very interesting and alarming to me. Not only do I know people who have died due to useless teen violence, but also I have seen how these deaths can impact the family members of those diseased. For these reasons, teenage homicides, as well as all homicides in Philadelphia have a great personal, and interesting touch on me, and it should you as well.

            The Philadelphia homicide rate was the highest in 2010 throughout the entire country, with a 19.6% homicide rate. This is nothing compared to the fact that so far there has been 122 homicides in Philadelphia alone. Considering it is only May, this is a staggering total. You also see that since it is only about half way through the year, if this rate stays the same, we will have over 250 homicides by the end of the year. That is 250 people who died due to the selfishness of others, and who obviously died before their times. If that weren’t enough, here are more staggering statistics about the homicides in Philly over the past few years:

·      In 2011 there was a total of 324 homicides in Philadelphia with a 20.7% homicide rate, which was more than any other large city.

·      Philadelphia has had 1,654 homicides over the past 5 years, with 2007, being the worst year, with 391 homicides that year alone.

·      During 2006 and 2007, Philadelphia was the only city with a population of over 1,000,000 to be on the 10 most murderous cities list.

            So from this you can see that the homicide rate in Philadelphia is a serious issue. Although I am not yet an expert on this topic, I would like to try and become one by learning more about Philadelphia and its unbelievable murder rate. Some things that I still question and would like to learn are; where in Philadelphia is there the most murders? What nationality of people is doing the most murdering? What age group does the most murdering and how can we change this so that it doesn’t happen more often?

Here are all of my sources at this link.