The Volokh Conspiracy

Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent

Black Lives Murdered

U.S. homicides increased nearly 30% from 2019 to 2020. Homicides of blacks spiked even more, making up 56% of the victims whose race was known instead of 53% in 2019. This amounted to over 2000 extra yearly deaths among blacks.

|The Volokh Conspiracy |


You can see the data here and here. It appears likely that, as with homicide generally, the overwhelming majority of these extra homicides were intraracial, just as the overwhelming majority of the extra homicides of whites were likely intraracial.

Naturally, I very much support preventing unjustified police killings of blacks (and of whites and of others). But of course I'd like to see that happen together with a reduction of the vastly larger number of unjustified nonpolice killings of blacks (and others), rather than together with a sharp increase in net homicides.

Eugene Volokh is the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA and a Visiting Fellow (Senior Fellow starting May 2024) at the Hoover Institution (Stanford). Naturally, his posts here (like the opinions of the other bloggers) are his own, and not endorsed by any educational institution.