POVIS Blog #5

Murder is one of those crimes that happens everywhere. You can't escape it. Maine is obviously no exception then. Even though, as previously stated in other blogs, Maine has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the country, rates of murder show similar trends to that of the rest of the nation. A Uniform Crime Report (UCR) crime summary, shown here, gives a ten-year look at murder and other crimes; murder steadily increases until 2009 where the rates decrease and continue to decrease in 2010. They rise again as we look at 2011. This is consistent with even longer term data showing that murder rates tend to oscillate as the years and decades go on. For an even extensive look at the fluctuation of murder rates in Maine, take a look at the UCR crime survey from 1960-2011.

Maine isn't without the classic type murders that would be featured on shows like CSI:Whatever. The murder of two teens by a landord, aparently over something as trivial as where a car was parked during a snowstorm made headlines in December 2012. Or how about the murder of a drug dealer's girlfriend? That occured in 2009. I can almost hear Gil Grissom's voice quoting Shakespeare or somone with equal gravitas describing the fate that fell to a woman because of her relationships. The offender was recently sentenced to life in prison.


"'Blah, blah, blah.' Chaucer."