FBI registers a jump in homicide

In the United States, 21,500 murders were committed in 2020, an increase of almost 30 percent compared to a year earlier, reports the FBI. This is the largest annual increase since the FBI began its national registration in the early 1960s. Experts attribute the increase in part to the hardships of COVID-19.

76 percent of the murders last year were committed using firearms, which is 3 percent more than a year earlier. In Houston, a 55 percent increase in the number of homicides committed in this way was recorded.

Experts have no easy explanation for the increase. Some relate it to the pandemic and its destabilizing effects, while others attribute the increase to the effects of large-scale demonstrations against police violence or the increase in arms sales.

Federal Police have not yet released data for 2021, but preliminary figures from the country’s major cities do not indicate a decline.

In 2020, there were 6.5 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in the United States. In Mexico it was 35, in Brazil 27 and in Russia 8, according to the latest figures from the World Bank.