Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of contemporary differences in rates and trends in intentional homicide rates in Europe between 1990 and 2008. The analysis is based on data from the European Sourcebook, United Nations Surveys on Crime Trends and Operations of the Criminal Justice System (UNCS), and the World Health Organization (WHO) mortality statistics as well as on published reports (e.g., http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained 2010; International statistics on crime and justice, 2010; European report on preventing violence and knife crime among young people, 2010). First, European homicide rates are placed in a global context, followed by comparisons between individual European countries and between European country clusters based on an elaboration of Esping-Andersen’s (The three worlds of welfare capitalism, 1990) typology of welfare states. The chapter also discusses citizenship (immigration status), gender, age, and weapon selection related to homicide in Europe.
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- 1.
See also the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime publication International Homicide Statistics (HIS).
- 2.
See Marshall and Block (2004) for an attempt to address the missing data problem in comparative homicide research by creating a composite measure (International Homicide Index).
- 3.
There are efforts underway to remedy this situation at the European level. Eurostat received a mandate under the 2004 Hague Program to develop comparable statistics on crime and criminal justice. A series of measures towards this end were undertaken under the 2006–2010 Action Plan. The system will now be enhanced and extended as part of the implementation of the 2009 Stockholm Programme: An open and secure Europe serving and protecting citizens. (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/crime/introduction).
- 4.
WHO, for example, defines the European Region as having 52 nations, including a number of nations located on the Asian continent (e.g., Azerbaijan, Georgia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan).
- 5.
In this context, we should keep in mind that while we tend to focus on the available international indicators for homicide comparisons, there are also numerous other local and national sources (newspaper accounts, ethnographic studies, and so on) that should be used to validate the observed global discrepancies in levels of lethal (criminal) (interpersonal) violence.
- 6.
WHO data show considerably larger homicide rates – compared to the criminal justice data – for Russia Federation, Ukraine, Latvia, Belarus, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldova, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, and Bulgaria (Malby, 2010, p. 14). For a detailed analysis and discussion of the discrepancy in Russia, see Pridemore (2003).
- 7.
The Americas include the Caribbean, Central America, South America, and North America (Mexico, Canada, and the United States). Oceania includes New Zealand, Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.
- 8.
- 9.
See Section “Sources Used” for an explanation of data sources used to create these tables.
- 10.
By using average rates (2006–2008), however, we may be more confident that the rates are not the result of some unique one-time fluke.
- 11.
- 12.
For Denmark, the rates for 1999 actually are higher than in 1990, and 2008 is higher than 2000. Because of the use of aggregation, some of the variation in rates is overshadowed. Without using the 2008 data, the trend would have been somewhat different. This shows that the selection of particular years (begin and end) as cut off points may make a considerable impact on the conclusions.
- 13.
See Marshall et al. (2010) for a more detailed explanation.
- 14.
Rates of nonfatal violence in many countries are also highest among people aged 15–29 years (Sethi et al., 2010, p. 11).
- 15.
Please note that this report covers the WHO European Region consisting of 52 countries.
- 16.
Note that these causes are different from those typically mentioned in the US for the large increase in crime in the late 1980s: drugs, gangs, guns.
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Appendix
Appendix
Standardized death rate, homicide, and assault rates per 100,000 from 1990 to 1999
Standardized death rate, homicide, and assault rates per 100,000 from 2000 to 2009
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Marshall, I.H., Summers, D.L. (2012). Contemporary Differences in Rates and Trends of Homicide Among European Nations. In: Liem, M., Pridemore, W. (eds) Handbook of European Homicide Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0466-8_4
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