Details for Milestone are available on Canvas (left sidebar, Course Project) or here.
Our main goal is to figure out the trends between solved and unsolved homicides. Furthermore, we want to see if there are contributing factors that determine if a case is going to be solved or unsolved. Considering the incredibly polarized discourse regarding US law enforcement - specifically their treatment of marginalized groups - we are highly interested in studying this dataset to find if there is evidence that indicates police partiality or negligence towards solving homicides involving marginalized groups. Some more specific questions we have include:
- Is there a trend between race, sex, age of either either victim or perpetrator that correlates to a case being solved?
- What was the socioeconomic situation of the city/state at the time of the homicide and could this affect whether or not a crime was solved?
- Is there a difference between red states and blue states regarding solved cases, and what are the factors that contribute to this difference?
- Is there a trend between solved and unsolved cases from 1980 to 2014?
With the detailed dataset provided, and although some of our questions require that we add to the dataset (socioeconomic situation of location, political leanings of states, etc.), all the information we need to answer our listed questions are available to the public. We believe that this along with our focused topic will help us create an informative data dashboard by the end of the course.
The Homicide Reports dataset contains cases from the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report as the Freedom of Information act (which were not reported to the Justice department). The dataset contains the city, state, year, month, crime type and the agency in charge of the homicide. It also contains the race, sex and age of both the victim and the perpetrator as well as their relationship and the weapon used.The homicides reported range from 1980 to 2014.
This dataset is a part of the Murder Accountability Project, a non-profit group that seeks to illuminate the ongoing issue in the US of accounting for unsolved homicide cases. Since estimates and projections make up the majority of national statistics (due to incomplete reports and unwillingness from police departments to cooperate with crime reporting programs), the project has made this dataset public for accountability.
America does a poor job tracking and accounting for its unsolved homicides. Every year, at least 5,000 killers get away with murder. The rate at which police clear homicides through arrest has declined over the years until, today, about a third go unsolved. As a result, more than 256,000 Americans have perished in unsolved homicides committed since 1980 — more than the combined death toll of all U.S. military actions since World War II. In fact, total U.S. military fatalities during the eight-year invasion and occupation of Iraq were less than a single year of civilian losses from unsolved domestic homicides.
More information can be found on their website.
- Logan: A second year CS student with a passion for Kazoos (the musical instrument)
- Megan: A third year CS student who just wants to graduate
- Josh: A third year CS student who loves Java<3
Dataset: website.