More than 24,500 homicide deaths were recorded in the United States in 2020.  The twelve-state Southeastern U.S. accounted for 8,405 homicide deaths, or slightly more than 34% of total U.S. homicide deaths in 2020.  At 9.8 deaths per 100,000 population, the homicide rate in the Southeastern U.S. was the worst of any region of the country, as nine states in the region recorded a 2020 homicide rate that was above than the national average.  A deeper examination of state-level data from the National Center for Health Statistics, a unit of the CDC, provides the following details about homicide rates in the Southeastern U.S.:

Homicide Rates in the Southeastern U.S.

State	Deaths	Population	Death Rate*
AL	654	4,921,532	13.3
AR	371	3,030,522	12.2
FL	1,530	21,733,312	7.0
GA	1,093	10,710,017	10.2
KY	404	4,477,251	9.0
LA	873	4,645,318	18.8
MS	576	2,966,786	19.4
NC	884	10,600,823	8.3
SC	622	5,218,040	11.9
TN	753	6,886,834	10.9
VA	531	8,590,563	6.2
WV	114	1,784,787	6.4
Region	8,405	85,565,785	9.8
U.S.	24,576	329,484,123	7.5

(*) number of homicide deaths per 100,000 population

Report Period: 2020

Source: CDC Wonder. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Underlying Cause of Death 1999-2020 on CDC WONDER Online Database, released in 2021. Data are from the Multiple Cause of Death Files, 1999-2020, as compiled from data provided by the 57 vital statistics jurisdictions through the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program. Accessed on May 9, 2022