U.S. Department of Justice 

Office of Justice Programs 

National Institute of Justice 

National Institute of Justice 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: 

Research Directions 

Richard Rosenfeld*
 

University of Missouri – St. Louis
 

June 2016 

*Dr. Rosenfeld prepared this paper with support from the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 

U.S. Department of Justice, under contract number 2010F_10097 (CSR, Incorporated). The opinions, findings, and 

conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Department of Justice. 

NCJ 249895
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................................ 2

INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 4

DOCUMENTING THE INCREASE ................................................................................. 5

THE TOP TEN ................................................................................................................. 10

EXPLAINING THE INCREASE ..................................................................................... 11

DRUG MARKETS ........................................................................................................... 12

IMPRISONMENT ............................................................................................................ 16

FERGUSON EFFECT ...................................................................................................... 18

TOWARD A 21ST CENTURY CRIME INFORMATION SYSTEM ............................ 23

APPENDIX: CITY SAMPLE........................................................................................... 25

REFERENCES ................................................................................................................. 26
Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 2 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

The debate over the size, scope and causes of the homicide increase in 2015 has been 

largely free of systematic evidence. This paper documents the scale of the homicide 

increase for a sample of 56 large U.S. cities. It then examines three plausible explanations 

of the homicide rise: an expansion of urban drug markets fueled by the heroin epidemic, 

reductions in incarceration resulting in a growing number of released prisoners in the 

nation’s cities, and a “Ferguson effect” resulting from widely publicized incidents of 

police use of deadly force against minority citizens. The paper concludes with a call for 

the more frequent and timely release of crime information to address crime problems as 

they arise. 

The homicide increase in the nation’s large cities was real and nearly unprecedented. It 

was also heavily concentrated in a few cities with large African-American populations. 

Empirical explanations of the homicide increase must await future research based on 

year-end crime data for 2015. Several empirical indicators for assessing the explanations 

under consideration here are discussed. For example, if the homicide increase resulted 

from an expansion in urban drug markets, we should observe larger increases in drugrelated homicides than those committed under other circumstances. If returning prisoners 

fueled the homicide increase, that should be reflected in growing numbers of homicides 

committed by parolees. 

It will be more difficult to empirically evaluate the so-called Ferguson effect on crime 

increases, depending on the version of this phenomenon under consideration. The 

dominant interpretation of the Ferguson effect is that criticism of the police stemming 

from widely publicized and controversial incidents of the use of force against minority 

citizens caused the police to disengage from vigorous enforcement activities. Another 

version of the Ferguson effect, however, switches the focus from changes in police 

behavior to the longstanding grievances and discontent with policing in AfricanAmerican communities. In this interpretation, when activated by controversial incidents 

of police use of force, chronic discontent erupts into violence. 

The de-policing interpretation of the Ferguson effect can be evaluated with data on 

arrests and other forms of self-initiated activity by the police. De-policing should be 

reflected in declining arrest rates in cities experiencing homicide increases. Tracing the 

pathways from chronic levels of discontent to an escalation in homicide will ultimately 

require ethnographic studies in minority communities that reveal, for example, whether 

offenders believe they can engage in crime without fear that residents will contact the 

police or cooperate in police investigations. Such studies could also disclose other 

linkages between discontent, police use of force and criminal violence. 

In summary, the following research questions for documenting and explaining the 2015 

homicide rise, at a minimum, should be pursued when the requisite data become 

available: 

•	 How large and widespread was the homicide increase in 2015? Did other crimes 

also increase? 
 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 3 

•	 What conditions drove the homicide increase? Candidate explanations must 

account for the timing as well as the magnitude and scope of the increase. 

•	 What role, if any, did the expansion of drug markets play in the 2015 homicide 

increase? Was there a relative increase in drug arrests and drug-related 

homicides? 

•	 Did declining imprisonment rates contribute to the 2015 homicide rise? Was the 

increase greater in cities with more returning prisoners and among parolees? 

•	 What role did the Ferguson effect play in the homicide rise? If de-policing 

contributed to the increase, arrest rates should have declined in cities experiencing 

the largest homicide increases. An open question is how to evaluate the role, if 

any, of community discontent with the police. Ethnographic studies, among other 

methods, should be high on the list of research approaches to identify the 

mechanisms linking police legitimacy and escalating levels of violence. 

Researchers would have been in a better position to begin addressing the 2015 homicide 

rise, with evidence rather than speculation, if timely crime data had been available as the 

increase was occurring. We would have known whether the homicide rise was confined 

to large cities, whether other crimes were also increasing, and whether arrest rates were 

falling. The debate over the homicide increase would have been better informed. 

Technical impediments to the monthly release of crime data no longer exist. A large and 

worrisome increase in homicide should be the catalyst to finally bring the nation’s crime 

monitoring system into the 21st century. 
 

 

																																																							 

 

 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 4 

INTRODUCTION 

Early in 2015, the local press in several U.S. cities reported that the decades-long crime 

decline had been reversed by a sizable increase in homicide. Then, late in the summer, 

the New York Times broke the story nationwide (Davey and Smith 2015). Shortly after 

the Times account appeared, Attorney General Loretta Lynch called big city mayors and 

police chiefs to a meeting in Washington, D.C., to discuss the homicide rise (Byrne 

2015). It was there that FBI Director James Comey first publicly speculated that the 

increase may have been driven by widely publicized reports of police use of force that 

resulted in de-policing. Director Comey repeated the claim a few days later in a speech at 

the University of Chicago, where he called attention to a “chill wind” blowing through 

the nation’s police departments. He also pointed out, however, that he did not have the 

evidence necessary to confirm de-policing or any other explanation of the homicide rise 

(Schmit and Apuzzo 2015). 

A lively debate in the press soon erupted over the size of the putative homicide increase 

and its causes. On one side were commentators who argued that the increase was real and 

caused by widespread public criticism of the police, which had made police officers 

hesitant to engage in the proactive policing strategies that reduce crime (Mac Donald 

2015).1 On the other side were skeptics who argued that the homicide rise had been 

overblown and, whatever its magnitude, did not result from a “Ferguson effect” on 

vigorous policing (Bialik 2015; Coates 2015; Friedman, Fortier, and Cullen 2015). 

Notably absent from the conflicting accounts of the 2015 homicide rise was 

comprehensive evidence needed to evaluate the two issues that framed the debate: (1) 

Did homicide rates increase and, if so, how large and widespread was the upturn? and (2) 

Was the increase caused by hesitancy on the part of police to carry out their crimefighting mission? This paper is organized accordingly. 

I begin by documenting the homicide increase in 2015 with data on year-end homicide 

rates in 56 U.S. cities.2 I then present three plausible explanations of the homicide rise: 

expanding urban drug markets, declining imprisonment rates, and the so-called Ferguson 

effect on policing. Only the latter explanation has received significant attention in the 

debate over the homicide increase, but prior research has tied crime rate changes to the 

violence surrounding urban drug markets and to prison expansion (e.g., Blumstein 1995; 

Levitt 1996; Rosenfeld 2011a). In addition, there are at least two ways in which the 

Ferguson effect may have unfolded. The dominant interpretation is that the publicity 

surrounding recent controversial police killings resulted in de-policing. A second equally 

plausible explanation is that, regardless of their effect on police behavior, the police 

killings in Ferguson and elsewhere activated longstanding grievances in minority 

communities concerning the police and the criminal justice system as a whole, resulting 

1 Mac Donald later attributed the homicide increase, in part, to statements made by President Obama that
 

she believed were unduly critical of the police (Mac Donald 2016).
 2 I am grateful to Max Ehrenfreund of The Washington Post and Darrel W. Stephens of the Major Cities
 

Chiefs Police Association for providing the crime data used in this study.
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

																																																							 

 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 5 

in a “legitimacy crisis” that spurred crime increases. Researchers have also attributed 

homicide increases to declining institutional legitimacy (LaFree 1998; Roth 2009). 

I present several empirical indicators that can be used to evaluate the alternative 

explanations for the 2015 homicide rise. Unfortunately, the evidence needed to carry out 

the pertinent research is unavailable as of this writing, and will not be available until 

September or October of 2016 when the FBI releases its Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) 

for yearend 2015. In the final section of the paper, I argue that it should not be necessary, 

well into the 21st century, to wait nine months after the collection year to learn whether 

crime rates are increasing and gain some insight into the underlying causes. The press 

and advocacy organizations have done due diligence in compiling crime data from local 

police departments, but these sporadic and necessarily incomplete efforts are no 

substitute for the timely release of comprehensive crime and arrest statistics by the 

responsible federal agencies. Had the official crime data been released on a monthly basis 

during 2015, the debate over the homicide rise might have produced less heat and more 

light. 

My focus is on homicide for two reasons. First, with few exceptions (e.g., Friedman, 

Fortier, and Cullen 2015), the public debate has largely turned on whether and why 

homicide rates may have increased during the past year. Second, homicide is the most 

serious and reliably measured crime type for which trend data are available. None of the 

arguments in the debate over the homicide rise, however, including the explanations 

examined here, is limited to homicide. A Ferguson effect, expanding drug markets or 

declining imprisonment rates might have been expected to lead to increases in other 

violent crimes or in property crime. The first order of business for future research on the 

2015 homicide increase is to extend the range of offenses under consideration beyond 

homicide.3 

DOCUMENTING THE INCREASE 

The data used to determine the size and scope of the homicide increase in 2015 are from 

the police departments in 56 large U. S. cities (see fn. 2). The cities are listed in the 

Appendix. With the exception of Salt Lake City, Utah (population 190,884), the 

population of each city exceeded 250,000 in 2014. The 56-city sample, therefore, 

constitutes the bulk of cities in the UCR’s Group I category of cities with populations 

greater than 250,000. The sample accounted for fully 92 percent or 4,873 of the 5,305 

homicides in the Group I cities in 2014.4 

In addition, as shown in Figure 1, the average homicide rates in the 56-city sample and 

the UCR Group I cities have trended together for the past two decades. The correlation (r) 

between the two trends is an impressive .96. Both series declined through the end of the 

3 A good start is a study by Pyrooz et al. (2016) that examined changes in each of the FBI’s Part I violent
 

and property crimes in relation to a possible Ferguson effect.
 4 See the 2014 UCR at https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014.
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

																																																							 

 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 6 

1990s, flattened for a few years, rose slightly through 2007, and fell again through 2009. 

Another slight dip followed until 2015, when both series exhibited a notable increase. 

The 56-city sample used in this study is clearly a reasonable proxy for the 70-80 cities 

that typically constitute the UCR Group I cities with populations over 250,000. At the 

same time, the results of this study are limited to those cities and cannot be generalized to 

smaller cities, towns and rural areas, where average homicide rates are lower. With that 

limitation in mind, we observe that the homicide rate in the sample rose by 16.8 percent 

over the previous year. According to preliminary UCR figures, the homicide rate in the 

Group I cities increased by 10.5 percent during the first six months of 2015 over the same 

period in 2014.5 

Depending on the 

reliability of the 

homicide data obtained 

directly from police 

departments, a best 

guess is that the yearend 2015 homicide rate 

for the Group I cities 

will be close to the 

16.8-percent rise over 

2014 observed in the 

sample. The question 

now is whether an 

increase of that 

magnitude merits the 

attention it has 

received from pundits, 

advocates and federal 

officials. 

National attention to 

homicide increases in 

U.S. cities is not new, 

even during the period 

of the crime drop since 

the early 1990s. A 

recent example is the 

National Violent Crime 

Summit hosted by the 

Police Executive 

Research Forum 

5 Computed from data presented in https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-theu.s/2015/preliminary-semiannual-uniform-crime-report-januaryjune-2015/tables/table-1. The 2015 sixmonth preliminary UCR figures for smaller cities also reveal sizable increases over the previous year. For 

example, homicides in cities with populations between 50,000 and 99,000 went up by 8.9 percent. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

																																																							

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 7 

(PERF) in Washington during August of 2006 to discuss rising violent crime6 rates across 

the nation. PERF issued a report, provocatively titled A Gathering Storm — Violent 

Crime in America, that highlighted crime increases in a sample of 55 cities. According to 

the report, “For a growing number of cities across the United States, violent crime is 

accelerating at an alarming pace” (Police Executive Research Forum 2006; Somers 

2006). The Department of Justice initiated an investigation of crime changes in selected 

cities, but never publicly issued a report summarizing the results (Rosenfeld 2007). 

To gain perspective on the significance of the 2015 homicide increase, it is useful to 

compare it with the increases featured in the PERF report. Between 2004 and 2006, 

national violent crime rates rose by 3.5 percent and homicide rates increased by 5.4 

percent. The comparable increases for Group I cities were .4 percent and 4.8 percent, 

respectively. Violent crime and homicide rates then dropped in 2007.7 These homicide 

increases are not trivial but they are considerably smaller than those recorded for 2015, 

and they were relatively short lived. If increases of this magnitude garnered the attention 

of public officials, including the Attorney General (Somers 2006), in 2006, it is not 

surprising that the double-digit percentage increase in big-city homicide registered in 

2015 would also spark the interest of public officials and the press. 

Was the homicide increase in large cities during 2015 “statistically significant”? A study 

by Pyrooz et al. (2016) examined crime rates in 81 large cities 12 months before and 12 

months after the killing of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, on 

August 9, 2014. They concluded that the difference in homicide trends between the two 

periods was not statistically significant, although they did find a significant increase in 

robbery after the Ferguson incident. By comparison, the difference between the 2015 and 

2014 homicide rates for the 56-city sample in the current study is just significant at the 

conventional 5 percent threshold in a one-tailed test (p = .05, t = 1.66). 

A closer look at the results of the Pyrooz et al. study, however, reveals a somewhat 

different conclusion. Table 2 in that study reports a coefficient on the post-Ferguson trend 

in homicide of .015 and a standard error of .009, which yields a t-statistic of 1.67, nearly 

identical to that in the current study. Given the differences between the two studies in 

sample size, sample composition and estimation methods, it is difficult to directly 

compare the results. Moreover, tests of statistical significance are technically 

unwarranted because neither sample is a random draw from a population. Nonetheless, it 

seems reasonable to conclude that the homicide increases revealed in both studies are at 

least roughly comparable. 

Pyrooz et al. (2016) did acknowledge that homicide had increased in “selected cities” 

during the period they investigated and called attention to the elevated variance in city 

homicide rates after the Ferguson incident. The results of the current study are similar. 

Figure 2 (see page 9) displays the percentage change between 2014 and 2015 in 

homicides for the 56-city sample. There is marked variation in these one-year changes. 

Forty cities experienced homicide increases and 16 saw declines or, in one case, no 

6 Violent crimes include homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. 7 See https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 8 

change. Homicides in 18 of the cities increased by more than 25 percent; the increase 

exceeded 50 percent in 12 cities. The skewed distribution of the homicide changes 

indicates that a relatively small number of cities accounted for most of the increase in the 

sample. In fact, just 10 cities accounted for two-thirds of the total homicide increase 

between 2014 and 2015, as shown in table 1. 

Table 1 displays the 10 cities that contributed the largest number of homicides to the total 

increase in 2015. Together, the increases in these cities constituted 66.7 percent of the 

total increase in the 56-city sample. Had homicides not risen in these cities, it is likely 

that the homicide increase of 2015 would have generated far less attention and 

controversy. The remainder of this section focuses on these “top ten” contributors to the 

homicide rise in large U.S. cities. 
Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 9 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

																																																							

 

 

 

 

 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 10 

THE TOP TEN 

The top ten cities not only produced two-thirds of the big-city homicide increase in 2015, 

they also experienced a far larger percentage increase than the sample as a whole. The 

percentage increases in the top ten ranged from 90.5 percent in Cleveland to 12.9 percent 

in Philadelphia. The average homicide increase over 2014 in the top ten was 33.3 percent, 

compared with a 16.8-percent rise for the sample as a whole. One-year increases of this 

magnitude in the nation’s large cities, although not unknown, are very rare. Cities in the 

top ten had experienced one-year percentage increases in homicide that exceeded their 

increase in 2015 on only 15 occasions since 1985. The increase in 2015 was greater than 

95 percent of the yearly increases these cities had experienced during the previous three 

decades.8 If not unprecedented, then, the 33.3-percent homicide rise in the top ten cities 

certainly deserves further scrutiny.9 

The top ten cities differ from other large cities in other ways as well. As shown in Figure 

3 (see page 11), with an average population of roughly one million, the top ten cities are 

somewhat larger than the others in the 56-city sample.10 They also have somewhat higher 

poverty rates (24.6 percent versus 20.8 percent). The largest difference between the top 

ten and other cities in the sample, however, is their race/ethnic composition. The top ten 

have larger black populations and smaller Hispanic populations than the other cities. The 

relative size of the black population in the top ten is double that in the other cities (40.8 

percent versus 19.9 percent). By contrast, Hispanics make up just 15.2 percent of the 

population in the top ten compared with 26.4 percent of the population of the remaining 

cities in the sample. As we move to a consideration of explanations for the homicide rise 

in 2015, these race/ethnic differences merit prominent attention. 

In summary, the homicide rise in 2015 in the nation’s large cities was real and, while not 

unprecedented, comparatively large. Whether the increase extended beyond the largest 

cities remains unknown, although preliminary UCR data for the first six months of 2015 

reveal sizable increases in smaller cities as well (see fn. 5). Homicides in the 56-city 

sample used in this study increased by 16.8 percent over 2014. Ten cities accounted for 

two-thirds of this increase, and together they experienced a 33.3-percent jump in 

homicide. These cities have considerably larger black populations and smaller Hispanic 

populations than the other cities in the sample. We now turn to three plausible 

explanations of the homicide rise: the expansion of urban drug markets, falling 

imprisonment rates, and the effects of widely publicized and controversial incidents of 

the use of force by the police against minority citizens. 

8 The 2015 percentage increase in four of the cities (Cleveland, Washington, Milwaukee and Baltimore)
 

was greater than the increase they experienced during any year since 1985. The 15 yearly homicide
 

increases that exceeded the percentage increase in 2015 were concentrated in the remaining six of the top
 

ten cities and constituted just 5.0 percent of the 300 possible yearly increases during the 30-year period (10 

cities x 30 years).
 

9 The 33.3-percent rise in homicides in the top ten cities is statistically significant in a one-tailed test (p =
 

.04; t = 1.99).
 

10 The data shown in Figure 3 are from the 2010-2014 combined files of the American Community Survey

(www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/)


 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 11 

EXPLAINING THE INCREASE 

The study of crime trends is as old as criminology itself. A large body of contemporary 

research literature is devoted to explaining the causes and correlates of changing crime 

rates (Blumstein and Wallman 2006; Rosenfeld 2011a). The current task, however, is not 

to explain a long- or even short-run trend in crime rates, but rather a trend reversal in the 

nation’s large cities. Some of the explanatory factors that have been emphasized in the 

crime trends literature are poor candidates for explaining the homicide rise of 2015. 

Shifts in age composition or the consequences of exposure to lead, for example, unfold 

gradually over time and cannot explain why homicide rates would suddenly increase after 

falling for over two decades. The same is true of economic conditions, except for the 

relatively abrupt changes in income and employment that occur during a recession. The 

last recession in the United States, however, ended at least five years before the current 

upturn in homicide (see www.nber.org/cycles/main.html). Some evidence suggests that a 

drop in consumer confidence contributed to the increase in violent crime in 2005 and 

2006 (Rosenfeld and Oliver 2008). Consumer confidence, however, rose from 2014 to 
 

 

 

 

 

																																																							 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 12 

2015.11 Crime increases also tend to correspond with rising inflation rates (Rosenfeld and 

Levin 2016), but U.S. inflation rates fell from 2011 through the end of 2015.12 

It is reasonable to assume that whatever factors lay behind the 2015 homicide rise should 

themselves have exhibited comparably abrupt changes at the same time or shortly before. 

Among the explanatory factors featured in research on crime trends, the three that are 

examined here appear better able than others, at least in principle, to explain the recent 

homicide increase. We begin by considering whether the comparatively sudden uptick in 

homicide in large cities might have been spurred by a recent expansion in urban drug 

markets. The discussion then turns to the possible role of recent changes in imprisonment 

rates and, finally, to the Ferguson effect, in both its de-policing and “legitimacy” 

versions. Throughout the discussion, several empirical indicators are described that can 

be used to evaluate the contribution of these factors to the homicide increase, once the 

requisite data become 

available. 

DRUG MARKETS 

The United States is in 

the midst of a major 

drug epidemic. An 

important indicator of 

rising drug use and 

abuse is the death rate 

from drug overdose. 

Figure 4 displays the 

trend in drug overdose 

deaths from 1999 to 

2014. The overdose 

death rate more than 

doubled over the period. 

In 2014, more persons 

died from drug 

overdose than during 

any previous year on 

record (Rudd et al. 

2016). The increase in 

drug deaths, in turn, 

was driven largely by 

the growth in deaths 

related to the non11 The University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment rose from a value of 84.1 in 2014 to 92.9 in 

2015 (http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/tables.html). See Rosenfeld and Fornango (2007) for a study of crime 

trends and consumer sentiment. 

12 See http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-inflation-rates/. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 13 

medical use of opioid analgesics (e.g., Oxycontin, Vicodin) and heroin, as shown in 

Figure 5. By 2014, opioid and heroin deaths accounted for 61.0 percent of all drug 

overdose deaths in the United States (Rudd et al. 2016). Cocaine overdose contributed an 

additional 5,415 drug deaths in 2014, but the number of cocaine deaths peaked in 2006. 

Beginning in 2012, the number of heroin overdose deaths overtook the number of cocaine 

deaths; by 2014, the number of heroin deaths was nearly twice as large (see Figure 5). 

As more users enter the market for illicit drugs, the opportunities and incentives for drug 

sellers also expand. Disputes among sellers over access to customers, and between sellers 

and buyers over price, purity and other terms of trade, often end in violence in illicit 

markets where participants have no legal means to resolve disputes (Reuter 2010). In an 

influential paper, Blumstein (1995) linked youth homicide increases to the emergence 

and spread of the crack cocaine markets in U.S. cities during the 1980s and early 1990s. 

As the demand for crack grew, young sellers were recruited into the markets because of 

their reduced legal liability. They carried guns to protect themselves from rivals, 

customers and street 

robbers. As the violence 

connected to the crack 

markets escalated, other 

youth acquired guns to 

protect themselves from 

an increasingly 

dangerous inner-city 

environment. A classic 

arms race ensued and 

youth firearm homicide 

rates rose (see also 

Blumstein and 

Rosenfeld 1998). 

Subsequent research has 

confirmed the 

“Blumstein hypothesis” 

linking homicide and the 

diffusion of guns to the 

expansion of urban drug 

markets (e.g., Cork 

1999; Messner et al. 

2005; Ousey and Lee 

2002). The question is 

whether similar 

dynamics were at play 

in the homicide rise of 

2015. 
 

 

 

 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 14 

There are reasons, and some evidence, for and against this hypothesis. Urban drug 

markets are, or at least were, violent locales. As more buyers and sellers come into 

contact in these “stateless” locations, homicide rates should be expected to rise. But some 

evidence suggests that changes in illicit drug market transactions, such as the use of cell 

phones to connect with customers and effective law enforcement initiatives to shut down 

open air street markets, have reduced drug market violence (see Zimring 2011). In 

addition, the population groups fueling the growing demand for heroin differ from the 

largely inner-city African-American consumers of crack cocaine during the initial years 

of the crack era. As shown in Table 2, heroin use rates among non-Hispanic whites more 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

																																																							

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 15 

than doubled between 2002 and 2013, while heroin use actually fell somewhat among 

other race and ethnic groups (see Jones et al. 2015). Prior research has shown that, during 

the crack era, the link between expanding drug markets and homicide was strongest in 

cities with high levels of economic disadvantage and racial segregation (Ousey and Lee 

2002). Evidence that the current heroin epidemic has been confined to the white 

population also may be one reason why it has been defined largely as a public health 

challenge rather than a criminal justice problem (Cohen 2015). 

But the major reason to be skeptical of the view that the expansion of the heroin markets 

led to the homicide increase of 2015 is that the heroin epidemic took off several years 

before the homicide rise. Heroin overdose deaths were essentially unchanged between 

1999 and 2006. They rose gradually over the next few years and then increased sharply 

beginning in 2011 (see Figure 5). It is not obvious why the increase in homicide would 

lag at least five years behind the explosive growth in the demand for heroin, if the 

expansion of urban drug markets spurred the homicide rise. 

Whether the homicide rise was produced by drug market expansion or other factors is 

ultimately an empirical question for which we do not yet have answers. Strong 

conclusions will require ethnographic studies of contemporary drug markets, like those 

written about the crack era, that take a close look at the ways in which they may, or may 

not, give rise to the violence associated with the crack markets a generation ago 

(Bourgois 2003; Contreras 2013). In the meantime, however, several empirical indicators 

can be used to gauge whether the recent expansion of drug markets was implicated in the 

homicide increase of 2015. 

The most obvious indicator for assessing a rise in drug-related crime is the drug arrest 

rate. Drug arrests reflect enforcement policy and do not necessarily correspond with 

changes in drug law violations. Prior research, however, has revealed a close relationship 

between drug arrest rates and other indicators of drug use, such as hospital admissions for 

drug overdose (Rosenfeld and Decker 1999). Expanding drug markets should produce 

increases in arrests for both drug sales and possession. Arrests for drug abuse violations 

actually fell nationwide between 2011 and 2014, when the heroin epidemic was 

underway, but the aggregate data combine arrests for all drug types, including 

marijuana.13 Researchers can query local police departments for data that partition drug 

arrests by drug type. Comparably detailed data for large cities will be available when the 

2015 UCR files are archived. 

A more sensitive indicator of the possible role of drug market expansion in the 2015 

homicide increase is the fraction of homicides that are drug related. Most big city police 

departments code homicides by circumstance, including whether the killing was related 

to drug use or a drug transaction. The FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports also 

classify homicides by drug circumstance. Obviously, such classifications require 

considerable discretion on the part of crime analysts, but we should expect to see a rise in 

the proportion of drug-related homicides if expanding drug markets were a major 

contributor to the homicide increase. 

13 See http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=datool&surl=/arrests/index.cfm. 
 

 

 

 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 16 

IMPRISONMENT 

After rising continuously for several decades, the number of state and federal prisoners in 

the United States peaked in 2009 and began to decline modestly, as shown in Figure 6 

(for source data, see http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=nps). In 2014, 1.56 million 

persons were serving time in prison, down from the peak of 1.62 million in 2009. Rising 

imprisonment rates are associated with declining crime rates, although debate exists 

regarding the strength and policy implications of the relationship, as shown by the recent 

National Research Council report, The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: 

Exploring Causes and Consequences (Travis, Western, and Redburn 2014). Falling 

imprisonment rates might then trigger crime increases, assuming the relationship between 

imprisonment and crime is symmetrical. Did the growing number of ex-prisoners 

returning home contribute to the 2015 homicide increase? 

As with the drug market hypothesis, there are reasons for and against assuming that 

declining imprisonment was a major contributor to the 2015 homicide rise. Ex-prisoners 

have high recidivism rates; the most recent data indicate that two-thirds will be arrested 

within three years after 

release (Cooper, 

Durose, and Snyder 

2014). The arrest rates 

of released prisoners are 

far greater than those of 

general population 

groups of the same age 

and race (Rosenfeld, 

Wallman, and Fornango 

2005). As more 

released prisoners reenter the population, 

other things equal, 

crime rates should rise. 

But all else is rarely 

equal, if for no other 

reason than some 

number of persons will 

be entering prison at the 

same time others are 

released. The crimes 

committed by the latter 

should be discounted by 

the crimes the former 

would have committed 

had they remained free. 

A reasonably accurate 

indicator of the net 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

																																																							

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 17 

contribution of imprisonment to crime, therefore, is the number of persons released from 

prison minus the number entering prison during a given period. Figure 7 displays these 

figures for the period 2010 to 2014. 

With the exception of 2013, prison releases exceeded prison entries during the five-year 

period shown in Figure 7. But the net increase in returning prisoners varied considerably, 

from fewer than 5,000 in 2010 to more than 28,000 in 2012. The large net increase in exprisoners in 2012 may have contributed to the homicide rise three years later, but the time 

lag requires additional explanation. The results of a recent study are generally supportive 

of a time lag between imprisonment rates and crime rates. Rosenfeld and Levin (2016) 

found that imprisonment rates have nonsignificant effects on crime rates in the short run 

but significant effects that unfold over several years. That study, however, focused on 

robbery and property crime rates; it is unknown whether similar results exist for 

homicide. 

Future research on the role of imprisonment in the 2015 homicide rise must address the 

variation in prison releases and admissions across states and cities (see 

http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=nps). Three instructive empirical indicators for 

assessing the contribution of imprisonment to the homicide increase are (1) the net 

change in the number of prisoners released from and entering prison, (2) the number of 

persons on parole and (3) 

the fraction of homicides 

committed by persons on 

parole. 

The first two indicators 

essentially depict the flow 

and stock, respectively, of 

ex-prisoners in the 

jurisdiction. Published 

data on parolees at the 

state level are available 

from the Bureau of 

Justice Statistics’ (BJS’s) 

yearly probation and 

parole surveys.14 Countylevel data from the 

surveys would have to be 

obtained under special 

arrangement with BJS or 

directly from state 

corrections departments. 

The third indicator 

provides evidence of 

14 See http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=1521. The surveys, of course, do not include ex-prisoners 

who have “maxed out” their sentences and are not under community supervision. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

																																																							

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 18 

change over time in the involvement in homicide, both as offenders and victims, of exprisoners under community supervision. If ex-prisoners contributed significantly to the 

homicide increase, researchers should observe a corresponding increase in the homicide 

rate of persons on parole and in the proportion of homicides committed by parolees in 

those cities exhibiting large increases in homicide. These data will have to be compiled 

from the records of local law enforcement agencies. 

FERGUSON EFFECT 

What has become known as the “Ferguson effect” on the homicide increase, as noted, is 

subject to considerable controversy and evidence-free rhetoric. The term is also 

unfortunate, because it does not only apply to the police killing in Ferguson and because 

its precise meaning is unclear. The dominant de-policing interpretation is that highly 

publicized incidents of police use of deadly force against minority citizens, including but 

not limited to the Ferguson incident, caused police officers to disengage from their duties, 

particularly proactive tactics that prevent crime. Interestingly, however, that is not the 

interpretation of the individual who evidently coined the term. Sam Dotson, Chief of the 

St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, used the term in an interview with a reporter 

in November of 2014, three months after Michael Brown was killed. “It’s the Ferguson 

effect,” Dotson said. “I see it not only on the law enforcement side, but the criminal 

element is feeling empowered by the environment” (Byers 2014). 

It is important to emphasize both arguments Chief Dotson advanced in the interview.15 

He stated that the police in St. Louis were redeployed from their normal and more 

proactive responsibilities to address protest activities and civil disorder in Ferguson and 

elsewhere in the St. Louis area during the months immediately following Brown’s death. 

As conditions returned to normal, so did police activity. For example, arrest rates 

returned to pre-Ferguson levels after decreasing during the late summer and fall of 2014. 

In the view of the St. Louis police chief, changes in police deployment patterns did result 

in crime increases in St. Louis in the immediate aftermath of the Ferguson incident. But 

he does not believe that his officers engaged in de-policing in the conventional sense of a 

work slowdown or reluctance to engage in vigorous, proactive enforcement. That is 

where the second point becomes relevant. The Ferguson effect, in his view, was not 

simply a matter of altered police behavior. Criminals, according to Chief Dotson, became 

“empowered” by the police killing in Ferguson and ensuing protests and civil unrest. The 

question then becomes how such feelings and beliefs might have triggered a homicide 

increase that persisted at least another year after Ferguson. 

Intentionally or not, the St. Louis police chief invoked an important strain of sociological 

and criminological thinking in his explanation of the Ferguson effect: the idea that 

violence escalates when individuals and communities are alienated from the legitimate 

means of social control. When persons do not trust the police to act on their behalf and to 

treat them fairly and with respect, they lose confidence in the formal apparatus of social 

15 The discussion in this section is based on Byers (2014) and personal communication with Chief Dotson. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 19 

control and become more likely to take matters into their own hands. Interpersonal 

disputes are settled informally and often violently. Honor codes develop that encourage 

people to respond with violence to threats and disrespect (Anderson 1999). Predatory 

violence increases because offenders believe victims and witnesses will not contact the 

police. Individuals engage in “self-help” and entire communities become “stateless” 

social locations (Black 1983, 2010). 

Randolph Roth (2009) has distinguished the proximate and ultimate causes of historical 

changes in U.S. homicide rates. Proximate causes refer to conditions that criminologists 

typically point to as risk factors for violence (e.g., economic disadvantage, firearm 

carrying, drug and alcohol use). Ultimate causes are the more or less widespread popular 

beliefs that government and the legal system are legitimate and worthy of respect, and 

that government officials can be trusted. When the perceived legitimacy of government 

and trust in officials erode, according to Roth, homicide rates increase. Such historical 

periods include the years immediately preceding the American Revolution and the Civil 

War. Both Roth (2009) and Gary LaFree (1998) have attributed the rise in homicide 

during the 1960s and 1970s to the declining legitimacy of U.S. political institutions. 

The police are the front line of government in disadvantaged urban communities. 

Following Roth (2009), the ultimate cause of violence in these communities is lack of 

confidence in the police. When the police are called to respond to a crime, they arrive at 

the scene late or not at all. They do not follow up with vigorous and thorough 

investigation, even of the most serious crimes (Leovy 2015). They harass innocent youth. 

And, too often, they use force unnecessarily and indiscriminately. What matters is not the 

factual accuracy of these beliefs in every instance; what matters is that they can 

metastasize into a pronounced “legal cynicism,” especially in disadvantaged AfricanAmerican communities (Sampson and Bartusch 1998). When people believe the 

procedures of formal social control are unjust, they are less likely to obey the law (Tyler 

2006). 

If this complex of “feelings and beliefs,” in Roth’s (2009) terms, is the ultimate cause of 

escalations in homicide, the more proximate cause could be widely publicized incidents 

of police use of force that seem to confirm the validity of the underlying belief system. 

Lack of confidence in the police among African-Americans predates the recent police 

killings in Ferguson, Cleveland, New York and elsewhere. But it is likely to be activated 

by such incidents, transforming longstanding latent grievances into an acute legitimacy 

crisis. If that led to the 2015 homicide increase, we should expect at least four empirical 

conditions to hold: (1) the increase should be concentrated in cities with large AfricanAmerican populations, (2) the timing of the increase should correspond closely to 

controversial incidents of police use of force against African-Americans, (3) confidence 

in the police should be substantially lower among African-Americans than other groups 

and (4) the homicide increase should be greater among African-Americans than other 

groups. 

The available evidence supports the first two expectations. We have seen that 10 cities 

with relatively large African-American populations accounted for two-thirds of the 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

																																																							 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 20 

big-city homicide increase in 2015 (see Table 1 and Figure 

3). Further, the homicide increase occurred in the immediate 

aftermath of controversial police use-of-force incidents. The 

timing of the increase provides stronger support for the 

Ferguson effect explanation, in either of its versions, than 

for explanations attributing the homicide rise to expanding 

drug markets or declining imprisonment. Neither hypothesis 

can easily account for the sheer abruptness of the increase in 

2015 or, in the case of the drug market explanation, for why 

homicide rates did not begin to rise several years earlier. At 

the same time, researchers must be open to the possibility 

that the homicide increase predated the Ferguson events, at 

least in some cities (Rosenfeld 2015). 

There is ample evidence in support of the third expectation 

regarding African-Americans’ lack of confidence in the 

police. As shown in Figure 8, just 37 percent of blacks 

compared with 59 percent of whites expressed “a great deal” 

or “quite a lot” of confidence in the police in Gallup surveys 

conducted between 2011 and 2014.16 The sizable racial gap 

in attitudes toward the police is not the result of Ferguson or 

other recent events. For example, in 1997, 60 percent of 

blacks compared with 30 percent of whites answered “yes” 

when asked in Gallup surveys whether the police treat 

blacks less fairly than whites, as shown in Figure 9 (see 

page 21). The racial difference in responses to this item 

increased over the next 10 years. Interestingly, the racial gap 

did not change appreciably between 2007 and 2015, the year after the Ferguson incident 

and other controversial episodes of police use of deadly force against African-Americans. 

Finally, the difference between blacks and whites in attitudes toward the police extends to 

the justice system as a whole, as shown in Figure 10 (see page 22). Fully two-thirds of 

black respondents and just a quarter of whites told Gallup in 2013 they believe the justice 

system is biased against blacks. After Ferguson in 2015, the percentage of blacks who 

believe the justice system is biased increased to 74 percent, although the comparable 

increase among whites was larger, rising to 42 percent. 

16 For source data for Figures 8-10, see http://www.gallup.com/poll/175088/gallup-review-black-whiteattitudes-toward-police.aspx. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 21 

There is little question that 

blacks and whites differ 

greatly in their confidence 

in the police, belief that the 

police treat blacks less 

fairly than whites, and 

belief that the justice 

system is racially biased. 

The racial gap in attitudes 

toward the police is not a 

recent development. 

Tensions between the police 

and the black community 

triggered the urban civil 

disorders of the 1960s 

(Report of the National 

Commission on Civil 

Disorders 1968). Lack of 

confidence in the police 

represents a smoldering 

reservoir of discontent 

among African-Americans 

that is ignited by heavily 

publicized episodes of 

police use of force — the 

ultimate and proximate causes, respectively, of the escalation of violence. This 

hypothesis regarding the recent homicide rise merits close scrutiny by researchers, along 

with the alternative version of the Ferguson effect that attributes the homicide increase to 

de-policing. Finally, if the legitimacy crisis explanation is correct, we should observe 

larger increases in homicide among African-Americans than whites or other groups. 

Further, the increases should be concentrated in the disadvantaged black communities of 

large cities where legal cynicism is most pronounced (Sampson and Bartusch 1998). 

It will be easier to empirically evaluate the de-policing hypothesis than the legitimacy 

crisis explanation of the 2015 homicide increase. If de-policing was the operative 

mechanism, we should observe larger drops in arrests and other self-initiated police 

activities in cities that experienced the greatest homicide increases. The arrest data are 

readily available from the UCR, or will be when the 2015 UCR data are released in the 

fall of 2016. Data on pedestrian and traffic stops, building checks, and other self-initiated 

police activity will have to be obtained from local police departments. It should be noted, 

however, that the de-policing hypothesis presupposes a very large effect of policing on 

crime, large enough to explain homicide increases from de-policing of 50 percent or more 

in some cities. Effect sizes of that magnitude far surpass those revealed in research on the 

most effective policing strategies to prevent crime (Braga, Papachristos, and Hureau 

2014). 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 22 

Testing the hypothesis that a police 

legitimacy crisis caused the homicide 

increase will be more difficult. The four 

empirical expectations discussed above 

are necessary but not sufficient 

conditions to rule out other explanations. 

The key question that must be answered 

concerns the mechanisms that translate 

community discontent with the police 

into escalating levels of violence. Very 

little is known about this hypothesized 

relationship. Does widespread discontent 

lead offenders to believe they can commit 

crime with impunity? That seems to be 

what the St. Louis police chief meant 

when he said criminals became 

“empowered” by the Ferguson events. Is 

community discontent with the police 

fertile soil for “stop snitching” 

campaigns? Even more basic 

criminological questions are at issue. 

Was the homicide increase fueled 

primarily by offenders and victims with 

extensive criminal records or did the 

violence spread beyond the already 

criminally involved population? In other 

words, was the increase spurred by a 

growing prevalence of criminal violence or by a heightened incidence of violence among 

active offenders? 

The latter question might be addressed with data from ongoing longitudinal studies of 

delinquency and crime (e.g., Berg et al. 2016; Loeber and Farrington 2011). To determine 

whether discontent with the police reduced the willingness of African-Americans to 

report crimes to the police, police reporting rates by race can be accessed from the 

National Crime Victimization Survey when BJS releases the 2015 data and the results 

can be compared with those for previous years and across differing community types. 

The best and perhaps only way to address other questions pertaining to the hypothesized 

police legitimacy crisis is through ethnographic research in African-American 

communities that seeks to disclose how chronic discontent with the police may be 

activated by controversial incidents of police use of force and, in turn, may lead to a rise 

in violence. 

In summary, there are several empirical indicators and methods to evaluate alternative 

explanations of the 2015 homicide rise. It may turn out that the three considered here, as 

well as others yet to be proposed, are not competing hypotheses so much as interacting 

components of a broader explanation. For example, we might expect offenders to feel 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

																																																							 

 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 23 

especially “empowered,” not only in the context of community discontent and anger, but 

when they also believe, correctly or not, that the police have backed off as a result. 

Homicide increases owing to a Ferguson effect might have been greater in cities with 

expanding drug markets and a larger pool of recently released prisoners than elsewhere. 

The necessary research will take time to carry out and must await the release of key 

empirical indicators. 

TOWARD A 21ST CENTURY CRIME INFORMATION SYSTEM 

At several points in this discussion, reference has been made to the need to wait for the 

release of data needed to document and explain the recent homicide increase. The FBI’s 

UCR data cannot answer all of the empirical questions raised here, but they can be used 

to address some important ones, such as whether arrest rates fell in the large cities 

registering homicide increases or, indeed, whether the homicide increase extended 

beyond the large cities. FBI Director Comey has pointed to the importance of the data his 

agency compiles for understanding and responding to the homicide rise, noting that 

“without more reliable data, the task of identifying trends and remedies to fix them is far 

more challenging. . . . [I]t’s important, because it gives us the full picture of what’s 

happening” (Schmit and Apuzzo 2015). 

Imagine how the public debate over the homicide rise might have differed had the FBI 

released monthly UCR data one or two months after the collection period. We would 

have known whether other crimes in addition to homicide were increasing. We would 

know whether smaller cities were experiencing crime increases. We would not have had 

to rely on newspaper reporters and policy advocates to gather data from small and 

nonrepresentative samples. Assuming the Supplementary Homicide Reports data were 

not far behind, researchers would have had some indication of whether drug-related 

homicides were on the rise. The debate over de-policing could have been informed by 

comparative data on arrest rates. Better and timelier data would not have ended the 

debate, but they would have placed it on sounder empirical footing. 

There are no longer technical impediments to timely release of the nation’s crime and 

arrest data by the FBI. That is largely because the national UCR program no longer 

compiles data directly from the 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the country. Rather, 

most of the data are compiled, checked and submitted by state UCR programs.17 Many of 

the state programs submit the data on a monthly basis and those that do not can be 

encouraged to do so. Even if the FBI was able to release timely data for just five percent 

of the nation’s law enforcement agencies, roughly 900 jurisdictions, that would constitute 

a much larger number of cases than currently available. Researchers could then construct 

reasonably representative samples from those data that would be far more useful than the 

17 According to the UCR Data Quality Guidelines: “For the most part, agencies submit monthly crime 

reports, using uniform offense definitions, to a centralized repository within their state. The state UCR 

Program then forwards the data to the FBI’s UCR Program” (www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/data-qualityguidelines-new/#_ftn2). 
 

 

 

																																																							

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 24 

samples of a few dozen cities that journalists and policy advocates have been able to 

stitch together. 

The dissemination of timelier crime data that are useful for addressing crime problems as 

they arise would require that the FBI return to a practice it abandoned more than 80 years 

ago. During the 1930s, the FBI released crime data on a monthly basis (Rosenfeld 

2011b). Admittedly, there were fewer law enforcement agencies in the 1930s, but the 

data were entered in pen and ink or on manual typewriters and then sent by the local post 

office to Washington. If the FBI could release monthly data under those conditions, 

surely it can do so in an age of electronic data transfer when local police departments 

routinely post recent crime information on their public websites. 

Fortunately, the FBI is now working closely with BJS to modernize the nation’s policebased crime data infrastructure.18 A high priority in this cooperative effort should be to 

disseminate crime and arrest data on a schedule that makes the data useful for addressing 

emerging crime problems. Otherwise, we can be certain that the press and advocacy 

organizations will attempt to fill the information void with data of uncertain reliability — 

the very problem to which FBI Director Comey has directed attention in his comments on 

the recent crime rise. The nearly unprecedented homicide increase of 2015 should be all 

that is necessary to finally move the nation’s crime monitoring system into the 21st 

century. 

18 See, e.g., http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/NCS-X_FBI_BJS%20Joint_Statement.pdf. 
Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 25 

APPENDIX: CITY SAMPLE 
 

 

 

Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions 26 

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