Welcome To New Orleans SAFeDATA

The age distribution of the city`s populus is 26.7% under the age of 18, 11.4% from 18 to 24, 29.3% from 25 to 44, 20.9% from 45 to 64, and 11.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 33 years. For every 100 females there were 88.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 83.3 males.

New Orleans is notably absent from the Protestant Bible Belt that dominates religion in the Southern US. In New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast area, the predominant religion is Roman Catholicism. Within the Archdiocese of New Orleans (which includes not only the city but the surrounding Parishes as well), 35.9% percent of the populus is Roman Catholic. Catholicism has been present in New Orleans since its initial founding and continues to have an extremely strong presence in the surrounding area. This is reflected in many of the city`s French and Spanish cultural traditions, including its many parochial schools, street names, architecture, and celebrations, including Mardi Gras.

New Orleans has a high vicious crime rate. Its homicide rate has consistently ranked in the top 5 of large cities in the country since the 1980s along with Detroit, Washington D.C., and Atlanta. Homicides peaked at 425 in 1994, a homicide rate of 86 per 100,000, which has not been matched by any major U.S. city to date.

The homicide rate rose and fell year to year throughout the late 1990s, but the overall trend from 1994 to 1999 was a steady reduction in homicides.

Violent crime is a serious problem for New Orleans residents, yet far less of a problem for tourists. As in other U.S. cities of comparable size, the incidence of homicide and other vicious crimes is highly concentrated in certain low-income city neighborhoods, such as housing projects, that are sites of open air drug trade. The homicide rate for the New Orleans metropolitan statistical area, which includes its suburbs, was 24.4 per 100,000 in 2002.

After Hurricane Katrina, media attention focused on the reduced vicious crime rate following the exodus of many New Orleanians. Conversely, a number of cities that took in Katrina evacuees had a significant increase in their murder rate. Houston, for example, has had a 25% increase in murders from the previous year. Captain Dwayne Ready has specified, "We also recognize that Katrina evacuees continue to have an impact on the murder rate." Police have not kept records of how evacuees have affected crime rates other than homicide. As more residents return to New Orleans the trend is starting to reverse itself, although calculating the homicide rate remains difficult given that no authoritative source can cite a total populus figure. Regardless, statistics show that vicious crime has returned to the city.