PHILADELPHIA — Police say homicides in Philadelphia are on track to mark the lowest midyear total in nearly half a century.

Police had recorded 115 homicides as of Friday, with three days left in the six-month period — a 38 percent drop from the same period last year, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Mayor Michael Nutter, top police officials and prosecutors as well as criminal justice specialists credit a new emphasis on data-driven policing, a crackdown on gun crimes and sweeping changes in the criminal courts. In particular, police and prosecutors have been targeting so-called hot spots — areas identified as centers of criminal activity.

If the trend keeps up through the rest of the year, the annual homicide toll would be lower than at any time since 1968. The paper said its analysis of city homicide figures over the last half-century indicates that midyear results generally mirror the second half of the year.

The homicide decline reflects a general decline in violent crime, with violent robberies and serious assaults also down sharply.

Commissioner Charles Ramsey told the paper that the department has been trying to attack crime in a smarter fashion, using sophisticated computer mapping and data analysis to anticipate crime trends and get ahead of them.

“I’ve been around for a long time, and what (once) passed for analysis was simply counting crime,” he said. “Now we are actually analyzing crime and trying to learn from that analysis ways in which we can be more effective and tweak our strategy.”