Violent Crime in November (2024)

The Bottom Line: Violent crime on O‘ahu is currently: mostly down, but stable.

We apologize that our October and November reports are late; it’s been a busy time in the semester! But this month, we have additional analyses to show!

Each month, we analyze the crime data provided publicly by the Honolulu Police Department to understand crime trends and put the headlines in perspective. Currently, for each category of violent crime, we compare the number of crimes last month to the month before and the same month in the previous year. We do a simple statistical analysis to determine whether the year-over-year or month-to-month variation is out of the norm or expected variation.

For the first time, we can offer some longer-term analyses using more data, not just our standard quick assessment. Using data we have compiled going back to July of this year, and August through November of last year, we can say more about the distribution of crime rates within each category and also speak to longer-term trends. One caveat to these analyses is we use the numbers we have reported on our blog, which rely on the HPD numbers; however, our numbers are frozen from the time of the blog post whereas the HPD numbers fluctuate slightly as they are updated. As noted in our last post, we decided that rather than updating all of our numbers each month, we will use the numbers posted; this results in the numbers being off typically by a few counts (about 1-6), which should not affect the statistical significance in most categories.

If this is your first visit to the Crime Lab, check out our primer on understanding crime rates.

Aggravated Assault

Quick Assessment: There were 84 aggravated assaults in November. This is up slightly from November 2023 when there were 82. But it is down from the number in October when there were 106.

Is this change significant? Actually, some of them. While the year-over-year increase is not statistically significant, the month-to-month decrease is statistically significant.

Longer-term Assessment: While the drop from October is significant, in a longer-term assessment, we can see that the number of aggravated assaults is back “in the distribution” or the normal amount of aggravated assaults, which have ranged between 72 and 92 since July (excluding October, which was out of the typical distribution). This tells us that October was an especially bad month for aggravated assaults, but November was more typical. Moreover, despite the peak in October, so far, we’re at about the same average number of aggravated assaults for August through November (89.25 for those months in 2023 and 87 for those months this year).

Murder and Non-Negligent Homicide

Quick Assessment: There were 0 homicides in November. This is down slightly from November 2023 when there were 2. It is also down from October when there were 2.

Is this change significant? No. Neither the year-over-year drop nor the month-to-month drop are statistically significant, meaning they are within expected variation.

Longer-term Assessment: Homicides this year since July have varied from 0 to 6; in part because these are generally low numbers (of awful crimes), they tend to be very “noisy” meaning there is a lot of fluctuation. Reports in percentages can make the changes seem more meaningful than they are. This semester, however, our homicide rate has been fairly stable and the homicide rate is currently within the expected distribution. Between August and November both this year and last, we have averaged 2.5 homicides per month.

Robbery

Quick Assessment: There were 61 robberies in November. This is up from November 2023 when there were 55. It is down from the number in October when there were 73.

Is this change significant? Actually, no. Neither the year-over-year increase nor the month-to-month decrease are statistically significant, meaning November’s number is within the expected variation.

Longer-term Assessment: Robberies have ticked up slightly in the last two months. While October had a particularly high number of robberies, in November, we are back to within the distribution since July. However, overall, our average number of robberies is slightly higher than the same months last year (57.5 v. 50.25); however, this difference is not significant. Likewise, we can see that our number in November is slightly higher than the average for the last four months, but also not significantly so.

Sexual Assault

Quick Assessment: There were 66 sexual assaults in November. This is up from November 2023 when there were 56. It is down slightly from the number in October when there were 70.

Longer-term Assessment: Sexual assaults this month continue to be well within the typical distribution. This year, since July, they have ranged from 64 to 79, so at 66 we’re at the low end of that distribution. Likewise, our average between August and November for this year is about the same as last year (70.0 this year and 69.25 last year). October of 2023 saw a particularly bad spike in the number of sexual assaults (93) that thankfully we did not see this year, but that was followed by a much lower number the following month (56). In both years, November’s numbers were lower than average.

Looking Back and Looking Forward

Last month, we saw some significant changes. Two of the violent crime categories (aggravated assault and robbery) were significantly up. Homicide numbers were about the same, and sexual offenses were significantly lower.

This month, crime counts were down in all categories from the previous month, but only significantly so in some. Since last month was exceptionally high, this is another illustration of how crime rates can be highly variable. This also tells us that October was more of a blip and November shows us mostly getting back to normal from that temporary uptick.

Once again, seeing this short-term variation is a good reminder that the crime rate is highly stochastic, meaning it fluctuates quite a lot and we really have to look at the trend over time. So far, the numbers have been fluctuating, with no clear trend–although we’ll want to keep an eye on those robbery numbers.

Next Steps

We are still in the process of compiling data to construct graphs to show what the trends look over time like instead of providing snapshots. We should be able to show some year-end plots in the New Year to see how we closed out 2024. We again hope to continue to pull back the curtain and discuss how we calculate the expected variation. For now, we hope our analysis provides some context.

Additionally, likely next semester, we will provide another special look at crime in West O‘ahu as a followup to our last post putting the crime trends in statistical perspective.

Final Assessment

This month’s assessment is that violent crime on O‘ahu is mostly down, but stable. But remember: fluctuations are to be expected and we really want to look at trends. So far, there are no clear trends looking at the data since July.