Thursday, July 30, 2015

Shootings in New York


Shootings in New York: 2010-2013 is a map of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation Center's Shooting Index for New York census tracts.

The Center's Shooting Index represents the per capita number of shootings within a tract in which a civilian was injured from 2010-2013. That is clear enough. However the index is 'calculated to weigh recent shootings more heavily than shootings for earlier years'. Which without any information on the weighting applied by the Center is a lot less clear.

The map includes the option to click on the census tracts to discover information about the racial make-up of the population, the percentage of people in employment and the percentage living in poverty. It is a shame that this data doesn't also include the total number of shootings which would help to overcome the opaqueness of the Center's own Index values.

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