Talk:List of countries by intentional homicide rate

the sorting is broken but I don't know how to fix it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.141.1.81 (talk) 05:15, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be a section on stereotypes?

Many guidebooks, even these by well known publishers create false stereotypes. People from Western Europe or the USA tend to think that countries like Poland, or even worse Indonesia or Morocco are dangerous, yet they are not when you look at these figures and most others for other crimes. This mainly hits developing countries in Europe mainly Central Europe (for instance the Warsaw chapter about crime in the LP guidebook sounds terrifing and the Madrid chapter sounds a like safe places, yet Warsaw is statistically much safer then Madrid), but it also hits the USA everywhere but in the USA, where people atribute it with guns and large levels of armed robberies and murders, here guidebooks may be more fair, but still the media hype isn't. Shouldn't these stereotypes have a section? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.205.81.66 (talk) 22:28, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Sub national.

• USA states 1995/2005 [1].
• USA cities 2003 [2]. -- Jeandré, 2006-12-06t21:18z
• Colomboa cities [co-ccr2005] p. 118. -- Jeandré, 2006-12-23t20:47z
• South Africa, per police station and province 2006, 2007. -- Jeandré, 2007-07-21t10:37z

Moving article

Heya gang. I propose that we rename this article to "List of countries by homicide rate", and replace all instances of "murder" with "homicide" in the article. This is because "murder" is a very specific kind of homicide, and by definition would exclude manslaughter or unsolved killings. I'll do this in a couple hours unless somebody has objections. As I understand it, this article is meant to cover "killings", right? Please let me know if I am mistaken. -Taco325i 01:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if this is correct. Possibly the reported rates are sometimes for all homicides and sometimes for just murder. For example, the latest figures for South Africa from the South African police (http://www.saps.gov.za/statistics/reports/crimestats/2006/categories.htm) give a murder rate of 39.5 per 100 000 for April 2005 to April 2006. Total murders pluse culpable homicides (the two catagories of homicide in SA law) are 66 per 100 000 for the same period. Since the murder rate has been declining in SA for the last few years, I assume that it is this rate that is reported in the figures, not the total homicide rate. Whether the article is headed murder or homicide, the figures probably need to be cleaned up. Brutus42 13:00, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion it was definitely a mistake to move from murder to homicide as the definitions are different, and internationally less comparable. While all murders are homicides, not all homicides are murders. Also different countries include different criminal offences in their homicide data, including both conspiracy and abortion offences in some data sets and may often exclude traffic deaths. Murder is probably the most closely comparable statistic because most jurisdictions will count each person killed, whatever counting method they use. I would suggest having a page for each with notes about how each country's statistics are recorded. -- Cameron Dewe 11:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Andorra

Not a single homicide? Not one? And sources that carry no obvious relation? Not only does this sound too good to be true but I call bullshit.

Because I fear it might actually be relevant to some other statistic involved here I won't be editting straight out, but those numbers can't be right. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.213.168.136 (talk) 21:50, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

And Iraq?

Iraq is not included in many of the lists. I think the ongoing violence and the different reports by different organizations might make it hard to find a reliable source. But still it should be included in the list.

This link might be useful: http://newsbusters.org/node/9932

Rmleon 02:44, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not being funny Rmleon but that NewsBusters article is TERRIBLE. I don't know the site, but unfortunately they gave the game away straight off with the subtitle at the top of the screen. There were more hostile civilian deaths in just Baghdad during 2006 than there were murders in the United States the same year. The guy's using obviously incomplete figures for Iraq (they've got better since but are still WAY incomplete) to suit his own thesis.

I think Iraq could be included on this list. The IBC has it's murder/hostile death rate (just for civilians) at 101 per 100,000 for 2006 and 89 per capita last year. What do people think? Sarcastic Sid (talk) 01:14, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Are we sure these figures are correctly separating intentional homicide rates in Iraq from civilian war-related deaths? 24.16.88.14 (talk) 17:42, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I added 2008 data, which works out to 21. 67.173.73.156 (talk) 21:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

German figures are not correct

According to the chief of the Bavarian Police, the German homicide rate is twice as high as published by the German Federal Government. This is made possible by only accounting for those victims who die and are recovered in the same year. Also, ther German police only performs half as many autopsys as it should. So the real rate is above 2 victims per 100'000 citizens. Meswiss 08:30, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

That only accumulates to heresay, this is just republication of the government statistics. In addition to that there is no differentiation between the GDR and the BRD during the years of seperation.Spacedwarv 00:44, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Luxembourg figures are not correct

Luxembourg has a long history of leaving out those years where the number of victims would make them look bad. Meswiss 08:30, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

French figures are not correct

France numbers depend on politics and can not be considered ad valid. Many victims are never being accounted for using methods like Germany. Meswiss 08:30, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Homicide or Murder rates?

Are these statistics for homicide or murder? This page started of being called List of countries by murder rate then was moved to List of countries by homicide rate. However, in many juridictions these are two distinctly different sets of statistics, some of which indicate that only about a half of homicides are murders. This will account for the differences being reported above. There is a risk that poor definition of which sort of statistics these are will make this information useless as it will be untrustworthy. -- Cameron Dewe 11:27, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Does the blue map show the homicide rate or the murder rate? This article says homicide, but murder says its the murder rate. Emperor001 14:08, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

European Union

Don´t think that the number for the EU is that high. All of the "big" memberstate´s rates are bellow 2.37. So the EU number can not be correct. Perhaps this helps: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/hosb1203.pdf 30.05.2007- 16:34

That Home Office document appears to be better researched than some of the other source documents used in the article. It gives a definition of what is meant by "Homicide" as well as giving caveats around the data. The rates given in the above home office document differ markedly from those in the article. To me it suggests two different sets of data have been used. The original statistics in the article were Murder rates. The Home Office data gives Homicide rates. These are different aggregations of crime, meaning the data in the article is now suspect, and probably inaccurate. -- Cameron Dewe 12:53, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Factor

Shouldn't another factor for the murder rate listed be the area of the country in addition to how many people there are. Aren't murders more likely to be committed when a large population is squeezed into a smaller aera? Emperor001 01:20, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Murder is such a rare event. For example Norfolk Island has had ONE murder in one hundred years! A large population, a large area, and a long period of time is needed to determine the murder rate. And it is only an average, with a statistical variation. From a statistical point of view, having a sample size of less than about 30 or so (murders) is pushing the envelope of statistical validity in any case. Murder rate statistics for some cities are published, mostly the capital cities of the countries concerned. However, I think crime rates per population (density) per land area unit is going to be a challenging one to find. Quite simply there is not the research out there on how population density affects crime beyond the observation the bigger the population the more crime. Crime researchers seem to agree that because crime is committed by and upon people, it is the population that affects the numbers of crimes, so compute rates per unit of population, not rates per land area. If population density was a major factor then it would be expressed that way in the first place. I suppose you could correlate population density with the crime rate, but I have not seen any research on the topic. Wikipedia is not about doing original research, but about reporting the findings of researchers. There are other factors that affect the Murder/Homicide/Crime rate that are probably more important - like counting the same crime the same way under different legislation. That is currently the problem with this page - Homicide is not always Murder and every country defines both based on their own legislation and counts the crime according to their own rules, not some standard set of rules somewhere. That is probably a lot bigger factor than close quarters living. It is not even the same in one country - for example Scotland counts the cases that have one or more offences of murder while England and Wales count each victim of murder. Thus the Dunblaine killings were one murder in Scotland, although 17 people were killed; The Lockerbie bombing was also a single murder, with 170 odd victims; While the terrorism of September 11th, 2001 was not even counted as a Homicide but as Terrorism! About the only other factor researchers appear concerned about is whether or not someone was killed (or murdered) by a firearm. -- Cameron Dewe 11:56, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

From a new Wikipedian: How the hell do you 'cite' sources??

I've been studying the tutorials for hours and I'm baffled. Basically I'm trying to get my source in the 'references' section so it can be verified, but have no idea how. Sarcastic Sid 04:17, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

EDIT: Don't worry I've got the hang of it. Sarcastic Sid 09:08, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Questionable UN report?

I removed the UN crime report on Colombia as I felt it contained erroneous info. It kept talking about most of Colombia's gun homicides being highly orchestrated and professional. It's my understanding the big percentage of both homicides and gun homicides to be poor slum dwellers feuding over the local drug trade, arguments in the street/bar fights, crimes of passion, street robberies etc.

Where I did agree was the ownership of legal arms doesn't seem to equate to a higher homicide rate. Apart from that it wasn't the Colombia I know. They may have lumped the youth gang violence in with organized crime too which would be a little disingenuous.

Colombia isn't a nation of psychos but to claim most of the gun killings are not unorganized, impulsive and/or indiscriminate is just wrong. What do people think? Sarcastic Sid 14:41, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I think that this isn't the place to evaluate or discuss every other detail of the UN report or in general to debate the different perceptions about how gun homicides / violence operate in Colombia. It's still a perfectly valid source as far as homicide figures are concerned, as a lot of the figures in the article are also from UN docs. This article is just a list of homicide rates, after all. It's not dealing with the other details you've mentioned. Juancarlos2004 21:06, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Venezuela numbers

Most of the really violent countries I'm fairly certain include legal/police killings in their homicides - so I've done the same for Venezuela as they were seperate for that nation.

I don't know if anyone has seperated figures for all the worst countries but we are talking homicides (obviously not in the culpable or negligent sense) rather than murder rate. South Africa I believe also includes legal homicides in their official statistics, even though it's classed as the 'murder rate' rather than 'homicides' like Latin American countries. I'm pretty sure I read that on a reputable website a while back but if anyone knows for sure let us know.

Thanks. Sarcastic Sid 04:11, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

A lot of unclear assumptions here. The direct source cited in the article: http://www.chacao.gov.ve/plan180/anodespues.pdf, lists total homicides as 12,257 for 2006. This works out to a rate of 45, not 65. The above starts doing its own calculations and leaves things entirely unclear as to the veracity of the figures or rates put on the page. Where does it give a figure for "legal/police killings" and where does it say these are not included in the 12,257 figure? Until there are clear answers to these questions, the correct number and rate is 12,257 and 45 as given in the cited source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.73.107.18 (talk) 08:55, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I haven't done my own calculations at all. The Colombian murder stats for '04 and '05 at least include legal intervention - the Venezuelan figures will stay as they are unless someone who's worked extensively on this list tells me otherwise. 65 per 100,000 unfortunately (for Venezuela) is the true level of interpersonal violence in that country. We often don't know what countries include legal and illegal homicides together or seperately so adding all 'intentional' deaths as one is perfectly valid. Power Society (talk) 20:33, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I've just read your comment again and, with respect, you have poor understanding of Spanish or you haven't read the source properly. I put the page number on the footnote and it clearly states there were over 17,000 intentional homicides in Venezuela in 2006 (65 per 100,000). Power Society (talk) 20:33, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay, here's the breakdown of what the Spanish descriptions mean in the source provided:

Homicidios (murders), resistencia (self defence killings) and averiguación (either murder or self defence but unconfirmed). Power Society (talk) 11:50, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I believe that averiguacion refers to deaths under some kind of investigation. Can you show where it says these are "either murder or self defense (killings)"? 74.73.107.18 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.73.107.18 (talk) 16:52, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm looking at these sources more closely and I really think this is questionable. I can understand the inclusion of the "legal" killings, but it's this third category that isn't credible. I don't believe this source has any idea at all what might have been the cause of the deaths in the 'averiguacion' category. They are just deaths that triggered some kind of investigation. This particular source seems to just choose to assume they're all homicides of some sort, but this just seems like a fanciful assumption on the part of this particular source. The most recent edit on this page noted that the title of this page was changed to make clear that it did not include traffic accidents, which are sometimes classed as 'culpable homicides'. How do we know deaths from traffic accidents are not among those being investigated in these numbers (averiguacion)? It would make sense that such deaths would be in those numbers (that's how you determine which ones are or aren't culpable homicides). Or what about suicides or any other types of somehow suspicious or sudden deaths that might trigger investigations? There might be some (unknown) number of homicides within those numbers, but that doesn't make these homicide numbers. What struck me when i saw this list is how much Venezuela stuck out from the others. But this seems to be due solely to the dubious inclusion of these numbers that aren't homicide numbers, where otherwise it would be in the top 10 and more similar to the others in the top 10. Are the other countries including figures of "homicides" where you don't know if they were homicides or not, but just that they were investigated for some reason or other? I think the Venezuela numbers need to be changed. The current ones aren't credible.74.73.107.18 (talk) 11:44, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I've apologized to the above on their talk page, I'm embarrassed it was out order. I'll change the figures to proven murders and self defence killings when I have the time unless someone beats me to it. Figures from the last few years tabulate legal homicides seperately from murders so I'll do a table here explaining the calculations with both combined or something (excluding averiguación unless someone can prove their inclusion). I expect that'll be okay. Power Society (talk) 18:30, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. 2007 numbers are given in this report: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/11/18/ST2008111801141.html 74.73.107.18 (talk) 05:03, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Did a source check on the Venezuala numbers as they stood out to me. Source 20 lists the homicides for Venezuala as a whole as 10,606 which when calculated against the population of 26 million means a rate of 40.7 not 48. Not going to weigh into the other debate going on here regarding the way this source counts its homicides ... but I imagine a source stating the rate is 40.7 would be considered the maximum while other sources would be considered "including manslaughter" etc.--Senor Freebie (talk) 15:47, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, just did a double take. The figures I looked at were the murder rate for 08 and the population currently listed on Wikipedia for Venezuala. Given these figures exist though, perhaps its worth adding the 08 figure if someone can find the 08 population?--Senor Freebie (talk) 16:02, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I've done it for you but I still don't think thats the real rate. If you go through all the sources for Venezuela you will find different numbers of homicides. According to the last UN report there were 34 deaths per 100,000 pop in 2004 and here it says there were 45. The federal police on a press conference in January said there were 8,400 homicides in 2008 and that would bring the rate down to 32, sadly that wasn't posted on the Internet. Whatsoever, I decided to wait for another UN report to change or keep this numbers. For now let's believe in those numbers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.248.69.228 (talk) 02:19, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

I reinstated the elevated figures up to 2003 - remember they've added killings by police in self-defence on top of pure murders in the first Venezuelan document from 1990 to that year apart from 1997. I agree that someone changed my adding of legal killings with murders 2004 onwards as it doesn't combine the two in the sources apart from having undetermined deaths totalled with them. I thought I read somewhere on Wiki the 'data has to fit the source'. Power Society (talk) 01:53, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Swedish figures are not correct

In sweden there is a big difference between reported killings and actual killings. according to BRÅ (the swedish branch of government that studie crime) the reported number is nowadays almost twice as large as the Actual number of homicides. This is due to some crimes being filed twice, murders abroad being filed in sweden, etc. If there is suspicion of a murder a murder is 'reported', and it stays reported even if it turns out to be suicide or just a mentally ill person who believes people are being murdered all over the place. The report (unfortunately enough in swedish) is here http://www.bra.se/extra/measurepoint/?module_instance=4&name=03061810981.pdf&url=/dynamaster/file_archive/050119/36f538e30fef8246c5215eb566559ca0/03061810981.pdf Since they do not give the numbers for all years I am reluctant to fill in the correct numbers since they only go up to 2002, which will give a hell of a jump in murder rates in 2003 =/

User thinking about getting registerd...

You are right. The pdf says that out of 223 reported murders 2003, only 98 were homicide. (page 9)

I'll quote straight from the pdf with a few comments by me.

Korrekt registrerade brott (enligt anvisningar) [correctly registered] 124

Dödligt våld i Sverige 91

Dödligt våld utomlands [committed abroad] 24*

Stämpling till mord (ej fullbordat) [not completed] 9

Felaktigt registrerade brott [incorrectly registered crimes] 89

Försök eller förberedelse [attempt or preperation] 11

Alkohol/narkotikarelaterad förgiftning, självmord, olycka eller naturlig död [poisoning, suicide, accident] 28

Dubblettanmälan 25

Övrigt eller okänd ej brottslig orsak [other /unknonwn non-criminal cause] 25

Oklart om brott föreligger 10

Brott ej styrkt 2

Samtliga [Total] 223

Dödligt våld som anmälts i Sverige år 2002 (se ovan) [Correctly reported homicides for 2002] 91

Dödligt våld som rubricerats som vållande till annans död [Homicides reported as manslaughter] 7

Summa anmält dödligt våld i Sverige år 2002 [Actual total homicides for 2002] 98

*[Examples of crimes committed abroad were 15 murders in former Yugoslavia. - page 8-9]

But since the English-language sources mention the higher number I think it is hard to change.

Fred-J 15:49, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I found a text of it in English: http://www.bra.se/extra/pod/?action=pod_show&id=39&module_instance=11 . Quote: [S]pecial studies show that over the past 30 years in Sweden, there have been on average around 100 cases annually of lethal violence in the form of murder, manslaughter and assault with lethal results. There has consequently been no increased in lethal violence since 1975

Around 100 homicides would mean around 1 homicide per 100,000 instead of the higher figure given in the article of 2 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

But having "special studies" makes it hard to compare statistics.

Fred-J 16:00, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Pakistan ???

0,05 for the Pakistan ? Is a joke ? fr:Utilisateur:L'amateur d'aéroplanes —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.0.204.114 (talk) 10:00, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. An unstable country (in a general sense) does not always have a high homicide rate. Pakistan has a large population, so even with sensational homicide cases (such as terrorist acts in the case of Pakistan), the overall homicide rate could be quite low. A smaller country can see its homicide rate skyrocket with just one person murdered while it takes hundreds of homicides for a large country to see any effect. Note that Pakistan's population is about 40 times that of Singapore's. Combining those information with this rate, it means that Pakistan has 4x case of homicides compared to Singapore, but because of larger population, Pakistan ends up with significantly smaller homicide rate. This obviously doesn't mean it's safer to live in Pakistan because other crimes are not taken into account. It just means that you are unlikely to be murdered in Pakistan. --Revth (talk) 04:02, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

From [3], according to INTERPOL data, the rate of murder in Pakistan was 6.86 (per 100,000 population) in 2000. Not sure why the large discrepancy with the UN data. --Vsion (talk) 06:01, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

There are now two Pakistan entries in the table —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.176.147.226 (talk) 19:01, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I remember when Bhutto got killed. I said to myself: "6 months of homicide cases within one hour! ". Then you know Pakistan does not have a homicide rate of 0.02.

Deleted original and sourced Jamaican statistic from 1970's list

....a complete accident as I didn't know it was on there before I'd put in all the hard work, but I think my source is a lot more solid and it's every single year from 1970 onwards. It's also not the same stat stretched over two years like the other one, and it's still 10 per 100,000 like the original with 13 for the other year. To the guy or guys who put in Jamaican entries for the late 90's and 00's, I apologize if you had sources but at the time it was unsourced. Jamaica's murder rate in 2005 is also (as far as I know) universally recognized as being around 60 per 100,000 rather than the 45 per 100,000 that was on there. Regardless, I do apologize if you're work wasn't finished. -- Sarcastic Sid (talk) 19:57, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

More data is good, but Jamaica's 1980s, 1990s (1998 contradicts it's only ref: [14]), and 2001-2005 is now the only information not referenced in the article. Except for Jamaica everything else is either referenced to a cite next to the country name, or below the decade section: [13], [14], [25], [26]. Please add refs as soon as possible per WP:V. -- Jeandré, 2007-12-29t16:30z

I missed that reference. I don't know if people want to keep my data or use those three years in the UN report, with perhaps the stats I provided either side of them. The link I provided for Jamaica is on the 70's list, it goes right up to 2006 and it's meant to cover the 80's, 90's and 00's as well.

I don't know how you get the same reference number on the same page though, as when I try it comes up with a different No. for the same link. Would someone help us out with that? -- Sarcastic Sid (talk) 00:38, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

To reuse a ref you give it a unique name e.g. "foo2007": <ref name="foo2007">Foo, Bar. "Baz" 2007-12-30.</ref> and then you cite it again with with 1 tag that has a / at the end like <ref name="foo2007" />. I've done this for Jamaica. While I've sometimes used two diferent figures for 1 country with different refs, I've kept this to only the UN Caribbean ref instead of including the different UN year ref as well. -- Jeandré, 2007-12-30t19:02z

Thanks for that. I've filled in a few countries' rates for 2006 too. I keep missing those references next to the years but I'll look out for them in future. Thanks again. Sarcastic Sid (talk) 22:57, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Albania figures are not correct

Someone has put Albania down as '96.46' in 1995, '87.55' in 1996, and '296.39' in 1997. These are all incorrect. The link provided clearly show that the 'successfully completed homicides per 100,000' was '6.46', '7.55', and '46.39' respectively. You can see someone has been screwing around with the statistics by adding numbers to the front of the old statistics. --Delos (talk) 03:44, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorting seems broken

When sorting a column with the largest values at top, sorting happens alphabetically, thus leaving both "5" and "55" below "6". How should this be solved? Padding with zeroes? JoaCHIP (talk) 10:40, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

• This is a problem stemming from the change in Wikimedia script. Right now, the best way to deal would probably be padding. CB...(ö) 01:39, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Cyprus

According to the official government police sources which can be found here http://www.police.gov.cy/police/police.nsf/All/72F71BC1A947C666C225741A0041EAFB/$file/Serious%20crime.pdf in 2007 there were 11 cases out of a population of around 790 000 by 2007 (official pop 2006 778 700 X 1.6% official pop increase = 791 000). That means that in 2007 the murder rate 11/790 000 must be 1.39. Will someone add it? I don't know how to reference properly. User:Whitemagick (talk) 22:11, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Iraq added

I've put Iraq in. Apparently these are only civilian deaths directly related to the invasion and don't include security personnel or traditional crime-related deaths, so they're not 100% percent accurate which isn't surprising given the chaotic conditions that pervade in Iraq.

There may be an issue with some people over this addition. Power Society (talk) 17:59, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that Iraq should be included, unless the figure is from a governmental or UN source. Iraq Body Count is neither of these.--93.97.196.179 (talk) 14:36, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

You can delete it if you want I only put it in to see how people would react. I think it's valid, though some of the deaths inevitably would be crossfire so they're not really intentional but still a result of original hostile intent. I dunno...I won't mind too much if it's excluded. Power Society (talk) 17:25, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I updated Iraq with the 2008 numbers, which as one would expect are far lower. Violent deaths are from icasualties.org (5929), population from CIA Factbook (28.2M). This number is probably overstated (the official number from the gov't of Iraq is lower -- 5714) as the icasaulties.org numbers come from IBC, which relies on newspaper reports (Iraq's free press is only a few years old and tends to print wild rumors that turn out to be exaggerated) and includes all violent deaths, but should serve as a reasonable compromise.

67.173.73.156 (talk) 14:58, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Japan listed twice

Japan is listed twice with different numbers. We need to choose the most recent reliable source and base a single listing on that. Heroeswithmetaphors (talk) 00:47, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

List of countries by intentional homicide rate

This is a far more appropriate title as the description clearly refers to interpersonal confrontation.

Homicides can also include traffic and industrial accidents, hence the change. Power Society (talk) 11:56, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Alphabetical order?

Wouldn't putting this list in A-Z be better? It would make the article look more substantial. I also suggest removing the color coding and aligning the numbers centrally to neaten things up. Power Society (talk) 12:02, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Do it yourself.

Copy/paste copyright violation.

See Talk:List of countries by intentional homicide rate to 1999. -- Jeandré, 2008-09-29t20:07z

Historic Data

What has happened to all the data that used to exist on this page regarding historic homicide rates, from previous decades? Has it simply been erased? I can see why the new design is more user friendly for someone looking up a country's present situation, but the previous data should be available somewhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.196.179 (talk) 14:41, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

See the link at the top of the article, and in the "see also" section:

List of countries by intentional homicide rate to 1999 --Timeshifter (talk) 03:46, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Pakistan listed twice

Unsure which one is right, but I have trouble believing Pakistan has one of the lowest murder rates in the world. (Burma is the lowest ???) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.160.32.116 (talk) 22:59, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Venezuela change and explanation

I've subtracted the deaths under investigation. The 2003/04 human rights report on Venezuela's security already includes murders and justifiable homicides combined (excluding 'averiguación' deaths) from 1990 to 2003.

2004 to 2006:

Year	Murder Rate	Justifiable Homicide Rate	Total
2004	37	8.2	45.2
2005	37	5.1	42.1
2006	45	4.4	49.4

--Power Society (talk) 18:28, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

New Discussion

A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Lists of countries which could affect the inclusion criteria and title of this and other lists of countries. Editors are invited to participate. Pfainuk talk 11:11, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Spain's figures must be mistaken

The rate for 2000 shown here is 1.25 per 100 000, but then it jumps to an annual rate of 3.35 in 2006. This looks suspect. The 2006 figure is taken from Spain's Ministry of Interior website. But the Eurostat website shows that Spain's average annual homicide rate between 2004 and 2006 was 1.14 per 100 000. The interior ministry website is wrong. Please correct the map.

Panama homidide rate

In todays newspaper 'La Prensa' , they indicate that Panama, with a population of around 3500000 people has 135 homicides a DAY. QTE 135 víctimas dejó la delincuencia cada día UQTE for full article see: http://prensa.com/t.asp?d=090406p1746615 ^^^^ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.227.26.149 (talk) 13:14, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

"135 homicides a DAY"

Clearly not correct. Power Society (talk) 10:33, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

It says crimes and not homicides. delincuencia->crime homicidio/asesinato-> homicide. Nando.sm (talk)

Northern Ireland flag

Please see this diff: [4]

I made a mistake by using this wikicode:

{{flagcountry|Ireland}}, Northern

It produces this:

Ireland, Northern

Sorry. I was trying to correct the sorting problem. It solved the sorting problem, but I wasn't thinking clearly about Irish flags!

I think I should have used this wikicode:

{{flagcountry|Northern Ireland}}

It produces this:

Northern Ireland

I hope that is correct. If it is not correct, then we need some kind of placeholder image there in order to allow the table to be sorted alphabetically.

See

• Template:Flagcountry

Template:Country data Northern Ireland looks like the place to solve the problem.

See also: Template talk:Country data Northern Ireland

--Timeshifter (talk) 00:51, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Northern Ireland does not have a flag, it has not had one since 1973. O Fenian (talk) 01:03, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

OK. If {{flagcountry|Northern Ireland}} is not used in the table, then when the arrow at the top of the country column is clicked then "Northern Ireland" is not sorted alphabetically. Instead, it goes to the top of the table. To see what I mean try clicking the arrow in this version of the article. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:08, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Here is a new blank {{flagcountry}} variant just created:

{{flagcountry|Northern Ireland|blank}}

It produces this:

Northern Ireland

It allows alphabetical sorting of the list.

Please see Template talk:Country data Northern Ireland#List of countries by intentional homicide rate for more info.

I put it in the list. It shows no flag. Is this acceptable? --Timeshifter (talk) 23:40, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

User:Andrwsc knew of a better solution, and added it to the article.

See {{noflag}}.

{{noflag|[[Northern Ireland]]}}

produces

Northern Ireland

This method allows alphabetical sorting to work correctly. It is better than a blank spot with a border that looks like it is missing a flag. That variant has been deleted.

So {{flagcountry|Northern Ireland|blank}} no longer works. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:09, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Andrwsc's solution. Good proposal.--Vintagekits (talk) 09:43, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

England/NI/Scotland/Wales

Why are those here? They are not in any other lists. They are not at List of countries. The United Kingdom is the internationally accepted country and is already in the list. Having all five is very misleading and POV. At the very minimum I suggest that the four constituent parts of the UK be moved underneath the UK heading as a sub section such as the special territories part of the table on theMember State of the European Union page. If that can't be done I suggest their removal in order for the article to be NPOV. Otherwise there'll be no reason not to include US States and German Bundesländer.MITH 23:54, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Please see List of countries by incarceration rate. That list was copied from the reference article, and changed to the wiki format. It also contains England/Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

Also please see: File:Homicide-world.png.

It might be a good idea to start an article listing the US incarceration rates by state. The above map could be cropped to pull out only the USA map. It lists the source for the states. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Could you respond to at least one of my comments? The source for that completely makes my point. It doesn't include the four in the main list. It's

United Kingdom: England & Wales

United Kingdom: Northern Ireland

United Kingdom: Scotland

The article needs to reflect real world NPOV.MITH 07:47, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

On the vast majority of international lists the United Kingdom should be the ONLY country listed along side other sovereign states. However when it comes to crime we do have a very different system between England+Wales and Scotland. International organisations sometimes do record them separately as the source for this list does. I dont think England/Wales / Northern Ireland need to be removed however (UK) should be added after each of them or at the very least a note explaining above or below the table that they are listed separately because of the different systems. BritishWatcher (talk) 08:57, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good. I added "(UK)" after each region. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:04, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

If one should complicate even more, why is EU (not a Federal State)listed as a State? Besides, England is singlehandedly nine statistical regions, not one. Australia does also consist of (large) states. The US does also consist of regions, like when they show basketball on TV. Maybe it's a good idea not to question how soon, or how late we are to stop disecting for more statistics.

EU members and candidate countries

Eurostat has recently published the latest criminal statistics for the EU member states and candidate countries here [[5]]. Perhaps the numbers can be updates according to that publication.--Avidius (talk) 16:44, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Numbers for the Netherlands

I have updated the numbers for the Netherlands using the statistics from the Dutch CBS (Central Bureau of Statistics, http://www.cbs.nl). The numbers:

YEAR	MURDERS	POPULATION	PER 100.000
2000	180	15863950	1.13
2001	202	15987075	1.26
2002	195	16105285	1.21
2003	202	16192572	1.25
2004	191	16258032	1.17
2005	174	16305526	1.07
2006	128	16334210	0.78
2007	143	16357992	0.87
2008	150	16405399	0.91

Best regards,

24.132.243.197 (talk) 14:00, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

The map

I have replaced the map. The arbitrary division of separate Canadian provinces and American States, not shown for any other country, is a clear example of WP:Systematic bias. It also makes it more difficult to compare like data, to see for example, whether the murder rate in USA is higher or lower than that of the UK. Either we should divide every country into administrative regions or we should not divide any. Anything else looks North American-centric. --Lo2u ^{(T • C)} 20:00, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

No it wasn't; with all due respect, I'm unreplacing it. I didn't add other regions because I couldn't find any data on them. If you can find them, by all means add them. Since when is more precise a worse thing? Magog the Ogre (talk) 23:47, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Apologies, I missed your comments. I didn't accuse you of Americocentrism, I only said that it creates that appearance. And I still believe it does. It puts individual American states and provinces on a level with sovereign nations. Also, more precision can be a worse thing. I actually came to this article wishing to compare the murder rates of the UK and the USA. This was made more difficult than it should have been. A map of North America that compares the murder rates of individual states is a useful thing and I'm happy to produce a separate map if you don't want to, which could sit alongside this one. However, very few people will ever wish to know if the murder rate in a particular country is higher or lower than that of an individual American state. They are far more likely to want to compare the USA as a whole. I understand the reason for indicating the individual states, ideally the map would be as precise as the one to the right. But that is a different sort of map. A map that showed murder rates with the closest available precision would not show any borders. Also, the title of this article is "List of countries by intentional homicide rate" --Lo2u ^{(T • C)} 16:23, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Population density

Rounding up or down?

Would it look better if we rounded the numbers instead of having a cluttered list with some countries having one or more fractions and others not? Unless (for example) the figures are the same or one country's rate is given without the fraction so we don't know for sure where it lies in the actual number, give the bias to the country with more murders. I've just done/cleaned up Honduras which somehow had been given Guatemala's murder rates. I may do more if I have time. Any objections? Power Society (talk) 02:57, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

India in the Records book

According to Guinness Records Book, India has most homicides in the world by having 38.000 cases. If Brazil has 50.000 cases, does that not make a world record too?

U.S. Virgin Islands

The United States Virgin Islands, a US territory consisting of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John, and outlying cays, has a population of around 110,000, with a record 47 (http://www.caribdaily.com/article/198454/v-i-homicides-near-record/) homicides thus far in 2009, and 34 (http://stthomassource.com/content/community/data/2008/01/05/homicides-2008#skip) in 2008. While it is not a "country" per se, a murder rate that rivals Kingston deserves it's own entry, yeah?

Guatemala source

The source for guatemala homicide rate for the 2008 is actually for Honduras. And it clashes with the value for that same year in Honduras. Nando.sm (talk) 15:33, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Vatican City

They had 821 people in 2007 and 1 homicide. 100000/821 gives 122 for the homicide rate. I think it was zero for the other years, but I can't verify that.

Thus the rate for the most recently available year (2007) is 122 per 100000. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.40.152.209 (talk) 06:46, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Kenya Death rates 2007 &2008

The deaths during the election period of 2007/2008 would have been huge since there was a big revolt led by Odinga. Convenient to leave that OUT! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.178.121.0 (talk) 23:45, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Mathematically, the UK figures must be wrong

On the table, the latest per capita murder rates for the UK as a whole (2.03) are not equal to the population weighted mean of the rates for Northern Ireland (2.48), Scotland (2.13) and England and Wales (1.37). It's not even close. So at least one of these figures must be wrong.--Mongreilf (talk) 22:00, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't care what the source is...

There is no way that Indonesia is safer than Canada. I have been to Indonesia extensively and the place is extremely dangerous and ridden with crime & severe poverty. Muggings are routine and the waterways are filled with pirates. This is just a ridiculous claim and this list has absolutely no bearing on reality whatsoever. I mean come-on, Madagascar is safer than Canada? You have to be kidding me.

Obviously whoever put this list together has never been to any of these places. This list should be revised so that you can provide some insight into which countries have decent reporting and which do not. This list may even inadvertently be putting people at risk who decide to travel to some of these destinations using research they find on this page.Yogiudo (talk) 13:35, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

One:the list is only for homocide/murder, not for general safeness, muggings or piracy and certainly not for poverty (which isn't even a crime). Two:the list is sourced mostly to UN government crime statistics. It would be better if the list were sourced mostly to government crime statistics. These would be people who not just have been to the country but live there. Three:There is actually a problem with the countries' data you mentioned:they are not uptodate. Madagascars' is from 1995 and Indonesia's is from 2000. Curious:Were you mugged often in Indonesia? How about your Indonesian friends? Munci (talk) 20:15, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Swedish statistics

I removed the statistics for Sweden. First: Sweden has no statistics on intentional homicide. There is only statistics on the rate of lethal violence (murder, manslaughter and assault with lethal results put together). Secondly, the table mixed numbers of crimes originally reported as suspected lethal violence (most of the figures) and the number of actual deaths by lethal violence. The discrepancy between these numbers, as could clearly be seen in the table, is over 100%. As can be seen on page 60 in Brottsutvecklingen i Sverige fram till år 2007, the cases of actual deaths resulting from lethal violence in Sweden has hovered around 100 for decades, and the trend has been a downwards one since cirka 1990. As can also be see, the number of cases where the initial suspicion is lethal violence has gone up radically, and is much higher. --Reign of Toads  11:19, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I added statistics from Sweden. As you are pointing out, there is no statistics on intentional homicide. However it is pointed out in the article that comparative analysis should be done carefully. The two best sources are SCB's death register [6] and the reported number of crimes from BRÅ [7]. I think that it's good to show an approximation even if it is an overestimation. /Eribro (talk) 17:34, 6 May 2010 (UTC)