Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Question about the murder rate

Never one to take things at face value something I notice about the large drop in recorded murders is this;

Going back two years to the 2008/09 year there were 88 homicides which compares to 93 in the latest year.

In 2008/09 manslaughter and driving causing death acccounted for 12 of the homicides. In the latest year that almost trebled to 35.

In 2008/09 murder accounted for 54 of the homicides. In the latest year that dropped to only 34.

The increase/decrease is a very similar margin.

How much of the drop in murder rate is due to the charge laid and conviction determined?

1 comment:

David Garrett said...

Unlike my friends at the SST, I always avoid saying too much on "the murder rate"..There are many reasons..in a small country like ours there will always be quite large flucutatiions in the raw number of murders per year; much less so in the "homicides per 100,000 of population", which is the internationally accepted basis for comparison.

And you are quite right Lindsay...in short, all murders are culpable homicides, but not all culpable homicides are murders.

In Tonga for example, there were no murders at all for twenty years after the last hanging...but dozens of homicides.