Objective
The purpose of this post series is to explore datasets from the UCR (Uniform Crime Reporting Program). In this post, we’ll use Pandas to dig deeper into crime statistics for homicide. After preparing the dataset for comparison, we’ll rank each state based on the number of crimes per capita.
Follow along or check out the code on Github.
About the data
The dataset we are using is the estimated_crimes.csv downloaded from the Cime Data Explorer website. This file contains the estimated crimes for 7 types of crimes, from the years 1995 to 2017, for the United States. For more information about this dataset and how it is compiled visit the Cime Data Explorer.
Preparing the data
For data manipulation, we will use Pandas. The first thing we need to do is download the dataset and load it into a Pandas data frame.
If you need the dataset you can download it here: https://github.com/rbk/Crime-Data-Analysis
In the following code, we use pandas to open the estimated_crimes.csv into a data frame.
We specify the columns we want to work with by specifying the usecols attribute. This attribute tells the read_csv function to only load in the column with the headers that are in the cols array:
import pandas
cols = [
'year',
'state_name',
'population',
'homicide',
]
raw_data = pandas.read_csv('../data/estimated_crimes.csv', usecols=cols)
print(raw_data.head())Output:
year state_name population homicide
0 1995 NaN 262803276 21606
1 1996 NaN 265228572 19645
2 1997 NaN 267783607 18211
3 1998 NaN 270248003 16974
4 1999 NaN 272690813 15522If you are curious on how to find out what the headers of your CSV are, use the info function:
data = pandas.read_csv('../data/estimated_crimes.csv')
print(data.info())Output:
<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 1196 entries, 0 to 1195
Data columns (total 16 columns):
year 1196 non-null int64
state_id 1173 non-null float64
state_abbr 1173 non-null object
state_name 1173 non-null object
population 1196 non-null int64
violent_crime 1196 non-null int64
homicide 1196 non-null int64
rape_legacy 1196 non-null int64
rape_revised 260 non-null float64
robbery 1196 non-null int64
aggravated_assault 1196 non-null int64
property_crime 1196 non-null int64
burglary 1196 non-null int64
larceny 1196 non-null int64
motor_vehicle_theft 1196 non-null int64
caveats 71 non-null object
dtypes: float64(2), int64(11), object(3)Top 10 States Ranked By Total Homicides
Now that we have our data loaded into a data frame, we can start processing the data. The first thing we will do is rank the states by the number of homicides.
This is a bad idea. Let’s do it anyway to see why.
This is a very simple task. First, we query the data frame by the year:
# Get 2017 state data
# We use notnull because the state name is not null for states
data = raw_data.query('year == 2017 and state_name.notnull()')Next, we sort the data using sort_values.
Using the by attribute, we provide an array of columns to sort by. In this case, we are sorting by the count of homicides.
# Ranked By Total Homicides
ranked_by_total = data.sort_values(by=['homicide'], ascending=False)
ranked_by_total = ranked_by_total.reset_index()
del ranked_by_total['index']
print(ranked_by_total.head(10))Output:
year state_name population homicide
0 2017 California 39536653 1830
1 2017 Texas 28304596 1412
2 2017 Florida 20984400 1057
3 2017 Illinois 12802023 997
4 2017 Pennsylvania 12805537 739
5 2017 Ohio 11658609 710
6 2017 Georgia 10429379 703
7 2017 Missouri 6113532 600
8 2017 North Carolina 10273419 591
9 2017 Louisiana 4684333 582The homicide column above is sorted by count.
From this simple sort, we can say that California has the most homicides per year. Statistically, this is true, but they also have the largest population of any state.
Top 10 States By Population
year state_name population homicide
0 2017 California 39536653 1830
0 2017 Texas 28304596 1412
0 2017 Florida 20984400 1057
0 2017 New York 19849399 548
0 2017 Pennsylvania 12805537 739
0 2017 Illinois 12802023 997
0 2017 Ohio 11658609 710
0 2017 Georgia 10429379 703
0 2017 North Carolina 10273419 591
0 2017 Michigan 9962311 569Ranking the states in this way doesn’t make sense because the number of homicides is not proportional to the number of people in the states.
From looking at the homicides ranked vs the populations, you can see that there is a strong correlation between the number of homicides and the population.
Next, we will rank the states by homicide rate.
Top 10 States Ranked By Total Homicides Relative to the Population Size
Now we will rank the states in homicide by the population size. This will give us a clearer picture of the homicide rate, e.g. the number of homicides per 100,000 people.
First, we’ll use Pandas apply function to create a new row.
The apply function takes the name of a function and “applies” the result of the function to each row. Our function is called per_capital.
The per_capita function takes each row of data and performs a calculation to normalize data.
The result is that we have a column for each row with the number of homicides per 100,000 people.
# Ranked By Total Homicides Relative to the Population Size
# Per 100,000 people
def per_capita(row):
"""Calculate the homcide rate per capita."""
total_homicides = row['homicide']
population = row['population']
count = (total_homicides / population) * 100000
return count
data['per_captia'] = data.apply(per_capita, axis=1)
# Ranked By Total Homicides
ranked_by_population = data.sort_values(by=['per_captia'], ascending=False)
ranked_by_population = ranked_by_population.reset_index()
del ranked_by_population['index']
print(ranked_by_population.head(50))Finally, we print all the rows.
Output:
year state_name population homicide per_captia
0 2017 District of Columbia 693972 116 16.715372
1 2017 Louisiana 4684333 582 12.424394
2 2017 Missouri 6113532 600 9.814294
3 2017 Nevada 2998039 274 9.139307
4 2017 Maryland 6052177 546 9.021547
5 2017 Arkansas 3004279 258 8.587751
6 2017 Alaska 739795 62 8.380700
7 2017 Alabama 4874747 404 8.287610
8 2017 Mississippi 2984100 245 8.210181
9 2017 Tennessee 6715984 527 7.846951
10 2017 Illinois 12802023 997 7.787832
11 2017 South Carolina 5024369 390 7.762169
12 2017 New Mexico 2088070 148 7.087885
13 2017 Georgia 10429379 703 6.740574
14 2017 Oklahoma 3930864 242 6.156407
15 2017 Ohio 11658609 710 6.089920
16 2017 Indiana 6666818 397 5.954865
17 2017 Arizona 7016270 416 5.929076
18 2017 Kentucky 4454189 263 5.904554
19 2017 Pennsylvania 12805537 739 5.770941
20 2017 North Carolina 10273419 591 5.752710
21 2017 Michigan 9962311 569 5.711526
22 2017 Delaware 961939 54 5.613662
23 2017 Kansas 2913123 160 5.492387
24 2017 Virginia 8470020 453 5.348275
25 2017 Florida 20984400 1057 5.037075
26 2017 Texas 28304596 1412 4.988589
27 2017 West Virginia 1815857 85 4.680985
28 2017 California 39536653 1830 4.628616
29 2017 Colorado 5607154 221 3.941393
30 2017 Montana 1050493 41 3.902929
31 2017 New Jersey 9005644 324 3.597744
32 2017 Iowa 3145711 104 3.306089
33 2017 Wisconsin 5795483 186 3.209396
34 2017 Washington 7405743 230 3.105698
35 2017 South Dakota 869666 25 2.874667
36 2017 Connecticut 3588184 102 2.842664
37 2017 New York 19849399 548 2.760789
38 2017 Hawaii 1427538 39 2.731976
39 2017 Wyoming 579315 15 2.589265
40 2017 Massachusetts 6859819 173 2.521932
41 2017 Oregon 4142776 104 2.510394
42 2017 Utah 3101833 73 2.353447
43 2017 Vermont 623657 14 2.244824
44 2017 Nebraska 1920076 43 2.239495
45 2017 Minnesota 5576606 113 2.026322
46 2017 Rhode Island 1059639 20 1.887435
47 2017 Idaho 1716943 32 1.863778
48 2017 Maine 1335907 23 1.721677
49 2017 North Dakota 755393 10 1.323814
50 2017 New Hampshire 1342795 14 1.042601What can we infer from this analysis
The new column per_capita, gives us a more accurate description of the homicide rate per 100,000 people for each state. For example, we could say that for every 100,000 people in Louisiana, there are 2.4 homicides reported.
Here are a few more conclusions we can draw from this analysis:
- The District of Columbia has the highest homicide rate, ranking #1 for the most homicides per capita (per 100,000 people).
- Although California has the largest population, the homicide rate ranks #29 in the country.
- New Hampshire has the lowest homicide rate.
Conclusion
The lesson from this analysis is that sorting by count doesn’t tell the full story about the data. California would be ranked #1 in homicides from the first analysis, but in reality, California has a lower homicide rate than 28 other states. This is a simple example of how data can be deceiving.
To recap, we used Pandas read_csv to explore the Estimated Crime 2017 dataset. We ranked states by total homicides. Then we looked at the homicide rate, which gave us very different views of how the states rank in homicides.
Thanks for reading!
FBI Disclaimer
“The data found on the Crime Data Explorer represents reported crime, and is not an exhaustive report of all crime that occurs. It’s important to consider the various factors that lead to crime activity and crime reporting in a community before interpreting the data. Without these considerations the available data can be deceiving. Factors to consider include population size and density, economic conditions, employment rates, prosecutorial, judicial, and correctional policies, administrative and investigative emphases of law enforcement, citizens’ attitudes toward crime and policing, and the effective strength of the police force.”