Houston homicide rate climbed 25 percent last year

Houston's homicide rate jumped 25 percent last year, joining a "nearly unprecedented" increase nationwide, according to a federal report released this week.

The number of such deaths in Houston went from 241 to 303, according to a report by the National Institute of Justice that looked at 56 U.S. cities.

The percentage of increase ranks Houston seventh among the top 10 cities nationwide for the largest "absolute increases " for homicides .

The homicides in 18 of the cities studied by the report increased by more than 25 percent, according to the investigation led by Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri – St. Louis.

"The homicide increase in the nation's large cities was real and nearly unprecedented," the report notes. "It was also heavily concentrated in a few cities with large African-American populations."

Chicago and Milwaukee joined Houston in tallying exactly 61 more homicides each in 2015 as compared to the year before, notes the report, which was released Wednesday.

Houston Police declined to comment on the new report.

Charles McClelland, who retired as chief of the department earlier this year, has noted that the upward tick in murders is consistent with trends in other large U.S. cities.

"We don't know why some years murders go up and some years murders go down," he has previously told the Houston Chronicle.

"Even though they may be up in calendar year 2015 - two, three years ago they were at record lows," he said. "But the dynamics and demographics haven't changed... The basic motive for murder is drugs, some type of money, or passion. And the people who are victims and the people who are suspects are young, minority men. And many times they're carrying guns unlawfully."