“You need to move to New Orleans,” said my friend, who lives Uptown.
I told him that that’s a good idea in theory — New Orleans fits my sensibility like a velvet glove, and I could finally achieve my destiny of becoming Ignatius Reilly. But the fact is, I don’t want to live in a place so ridden with crime. It’s a great place, but not worth it to me, not at my age, anyway. Look:
New Orleans’ murder rate is on pace to be one of the highest in the world in 2022 after already sharp increases in 2020 and 2021.
The city has recorded 145 murders as of June 30, putting it on pace for nearly 300 murders this year and a rate of 74.12 per 100,000 population. That rate would dwarf Chicago’s 18.26 murders per 100,000 population and would rank 9th among major cities in the world that are not at war, according to 2018 data compiled by the Citizen Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, a Mexico City-based advocacy group.
The surging murder rate continues to b a troubling trend for the city, which saw murders rise from 119 in 2019 to 201 in 2020. That number continued to climb in 2021, reaching 218, an 83% increase over 2019 numbers.
It’s not quite Jackson, Miss., levels of violence — that’s 97 murders per 100,000 residents — but it’s far higher than the murder rate of the world’s most violent country, El Salvador, which has 52 killings per 100,000 residents. There’s a lot to recommend New Orleans, but not enough to overcome the risk of falling victim to violent crime or property crime.
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