St. Louis Murder Rate
Every year, the murder rate in St. Louis puts it among the top murder cities in America. From 2016 to present, the St. Louis homicide rate has hovered around 200 murders per year, all within the city limits. The ominous superlative of murder capital of the United States or even murder capital of the world are often donned upon St. Louis due to the high murder rate per capita. With a population hovering around 300,000 and a homicide rate of around 200 per year, that puts St. Louis in the top 10 murder cities in the world per capita, at an astounding 67 murders per 100,000 population. That statistic only continues to rise as the population decreases and the murder rate stays the same. As of 2019 St. Louis was the only U.S. city in the “world top 10” for murder rate per capita, where it ranked 9th in the world (of cities with a population of at least 300,000). Of the other cities ranking ahead of St. Louis for highest murder rate in the world, 6 were from Mexico (including the entire top 5 where the murder rate ranges from 80-130 murders per 100,000 population). In 2019 St. Louis out ranked all other U.S. cities on the World list with notoriously high murder rates; including Baltimore, Detroit, and New Orleans.
The world list of deadliest cities per capita only includes cities with a population of at least 300,000, so certainly there are smaller cities with a larger per capita murder rate than St. Louis that fly under the radar and scrutiny of public eye. However, the list of the United States’ deadliest cities does not make that distinction. And still, St. Louis is a perennial top contender along with its smaller populated neighbor, East St. Louis. In 2019, East St. Louis had a per capita murder rate of 87 murders for every 100,000 population, down from 113 murders per 100,000 the year before. East St. Louis may edge the St. Louis City per capita murder rate due to its much smaller population, of only 26,000; but St. Louis had more than 7x the total murders of east St. Louis in 2019.
In fact, if homicides in St. Louis were broken down per capita by neighborhood, several individual neighborhoods would have murder rates of 3 to 4 times that of the top 5 deadliest cities in the world; where several neighborhoods would extrapolate numbers out as high as 333 murders per 100,000 population (neighborhoods such as Wells-Goodfellow and The Greater Ville).
To this end, however, the murder rate in St. Louis is an interesting statistic. There are 79 total neighborhoods that make up the city, however, nearly every year the top 10 deadliest neighborhoods in St. Louis contribute to over 50% of the total murders in the entire city. In fact, the top 3 deadliest neighborhoods in St. Louis, since 2016, have averaged about a homicide per month over the that time; 54 months (Wells Goodfellow – 59; The Greater Ville – 56; Jeff Vanderlou – 52). A quick glance at a St. Louis homicide map shows that many of those neighborhoods border each other, creating a pocket of some of the most murderous neighborhoods in the entire world.
In most years, there are usually a handful of neighborhoods with murder numbers in double digits. In the past five years the greatest death toll from any single neighborhood has been 20 murders in a single year (The Greater Ville in 2016); currently in 2020, the Jeff Vanderlou neighborhood may approach or surpass that grim statistic by years end. Our firm has created a neighborhood heatmap of St. Louis murders by year and compiled a list of the top 10 deadliest neighborhoods in St. Louis, to better visualize the murder trends in St. Louis over time.