Alaska’s homicide rate is higher than the national average, according to the report. And the national average is high already — more than seven times higher than other high-income countries combined in 2015.
Yearly homicides more than doubled from 2011 to 2019 in Alaska., which shows that the state’s annual homicide rate increased steadily and significantly over the last decade.
“What we saw when we looked at the timeline is that we see about midpoint, this increase,” said Deborah Hull-Jilly, a state epidemiologist that has monitored injury data for more than two decades. “So what’s the difference? What’s happening there that is impacting homicides, and having more homicide victims in the last five years?”
Alaska Native people were killed at four times the rate of white Alaskans. Men were the most frequent victims, accounting for two-thirds of the homicides in the state. Of female victims, nearly 40% were killed by intimate partners, like current or former spouses. But Hull-Jilly says there was another metric that mirrored the bump in the rise in homicide rates in the last five years. More than half of homicide victims tested positive for the use of alcohol or drugs — especially marijuana and methamphetamines.
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