Pine Bluff was in the middle of congratulating itself for not suffering a homicide in more than 100 days when, as crime would have it, there was a killing just as the new year was getting started.
Certainly, we applaud those who wake up every day and work in one capacity or another to reduce the situations that feed crime. That includes everyone from teachers and coaches who mold tomorrow's citizens to preachers who pray and go into the schools to mentor students to the Pine Bluff police officers who gets criminals and their guns and drugs off the streets.
Perhaps it is all working. We would all like to think so. The concern and push for something better have both been on overtime to make it happen so we all live in hope that all that effort eventually pays off.
At this point, however, we really don't know what to make of a 100-plus day reprieve from the most horrendous of crimes. Is it real or is it a statistical anomaly?
In looking back a half-dozen years, we see the murder rate largely unchanged, routinely ending up in the low 20s. For 2022, even with the dry spell, there were 20 homicides in Pine Bluff.
How does that compare to the rest of the country? Not well. Across the nation, the murder rate was around 7 in 100,000 while Pine Bluff's is 50. That means the likelihood of a homicide in Pine Bluff is seven times more than the national average.
Rape, robbery and assault cases also have historically been much higher in Pine Bluff than nationally, with assaults more than five times higher. The violent crime rate nationally was 4 out of 100,000 in 2021 compared to almost 7 for Arkansas and more than 18 for Pine Bluff. Put another way, the chance of being a victim of a violent crime in Pine Bluff is 1 out of 55 and in the state it's 1 in 148.
The chances of suffering a property crime in Pine Bluff is close to 50 out of 100,000 compared to 26 for the state and 19 for the nation. Again, put another way, Pine Bluff has more than three times the national average rate of burglaries and more than two times the rate of thefts and vehicle thefts as the country as a whole. The chance of being a victim of a property crime in Pine Bluff is 1 out of 21 compared to 1 out of 38 across the state.
That's a lot of statistics. It could be that some of those figures will be more favorable for Pine Bluff when the 2022 numbers come out. We hate to take the loss of a life or even the incidence of a violent crime and turn it or them into a number. To do that diminishes life and those lives. But from an analytical perspective, if the measure of crime in Pine Bluff was something at or below the national average, there would be great celebrating. Getting to that place, however, requires a clear indication that things are better. A pause in deaths is a good start. Let's see where we stand a year from now.