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January 6 Attack: Where are Those Charged With Crimes From?
A look into the data on the hometowns of those arrested and charged for crimes related to the events at the United States Capitol. It’s not just rural areas and small towns.
NPR has an updated database of information on everyone arrested and charged for crimes related to the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. As of the time of this writing, the number of people arrested and charged is 1,083.
I think it’s fair to say that many hold a stereotype of the most hardcore Trump supporters, those who would be willing (and stupid) enough to commit crimes on his behalf: people from small towns and rural areas.
We wanted to find out if this stereotype is true so we examined the data from NPR, logging every hometown of all but a handful of arrestees whose hometowns were not available. We found that the reality of where the insurrectionists come from is actually far more complex.
Methodology
We analyzed the listed hometown of 1,006 out of the 1,083 people arrested and charged as of July 27th, 2023. We presume that hometown means the subject’s address at the time of arrest. The remaining 77 arrestees did not have a hometown listed, nor were we able to positively identify one through other sources.
