Louisiana has struggled with violent crime for a long time. Since at least 1979 Louisiana has always had a murder rate greater than the national average, at times being over double the national average. A recent study from Zinda Law Group sheds more light on Louisiana's violent crime problem, as well as the other states with high rates of violent crime.

Personal injury attorneys at Zinda Law Group studied the most recently available data to compare the number of homicides per year to the population of each state.

Top 3 Deadliest States (per capita)

1. Mississippi
2. Louisiana
3. New Mexico

Using the most complete data available Zinda Law Group found that in 2022 alone Mississippi was witness to 576 homicides, a rate of 19.8 homicides for every 100,000 residents. Louisiana landed in second place with an average of around 19.8 homicides per 100,000 people, nearly triple the national average of 6.3 per 100,00 people in 2022.

Compared to years prior Louisiana has seen a rise in violent crime since 2018 when the rate was 11.4 per capita, which was over double that year's national average of 4.9 homicides per capita, according to the FBI's dataset.

In the past Governor Landry has pointed the blame for the state's violent crime on changes made in 2016 and 2017 by then-Governor John Bell Edwards, which Landry and the legislature mostly reversed earlier this year. Shreveport and Bossier City have joined with the FBI to combat violent crime in northeast Louisiana, leading to the seizure of 17 firearms, drug busts, and over 60 arrests. Special Agent Lyonel Myrthil from the New Orleans Field Office stated recently in an address to the community "We worked in partnership with federal, state, and local agencies to take the most violent individuals off our streets."