Murder: Encyclopedia II - Murder - Murder demographics

Murder - Murder demographics

Murder occurrences vary wildly among different countries and societies. In the Western world, murder rates in most countries have declined significantly during 20th century and are now between 1-3 cases per 100,000 people per year. Murder rates of Japan and Iceland are among the lowest in the world, around 0.5; rate of United States is highest among all developed countries, at 5.5 (2004). On the other hand, developing countries often have rates of 10-100 murders per 100,000 people per year.

Evolution of murder rates over time in different countries is often used by both supporters and opposers of capital punishment and gun control. Using properly filtered data, is possible to make the case for or against either of these issues. For example, one could look at murder rates in United States during 1950-2000 [5] and notice that those rates went up sharply shortly after a moratorium on death sentences was effectively imposed in late 1960's. This fact could be used to argue that capital punishment serves as a deterrent and, as such, it is morally justified. Capital punishment opposers would counter that United States have much higher murder rates than Canada and European Union countries, although all those countries have abolished death penalty. Gun control advocates could further point out that, unlike United States, many European countries disallow gun ownership by private citizens, etc. Overall, the global pattern is too complex and, on average, the influence of both these factors is probably insignificant.

It is also often claimed that murder rates are correlated with overall wealth of the population ( i.e. that murders happen more often in societies where larger percentage of people lives below the poverty level ). This claim is not supported by evidence. On the other hand, many researchers have observed significant correlation between murder rates and wealth distribution inequality, as measured by Gini coefficient.

In the Western World, nearly 90% of all murders are committed by males; yet, according the the US Department of Justice, males are also the victims of 74.6% of murders. There is a sharp peak in the age distribution of murderers between the ages of 17 and 30. People become increasingly unlikely to commit a murder as they age. Incidents of children and adolescents committing murders are also extremely rare.

Murder demographics are affected by increasing medical technology: victims that might once have died are now able to be saved, leading to a lower murder rate but not affecting the overall rate of violent assault. Thus the demographics of murder are not necessarily a good indicator of overall societal violence.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Murder demographics", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki