In the 1990s alone,the
homicide rate jumped 50%,going from 10 per million in
1990 to 15 per million in 2000.
Why is he using deliberately distorted figures?
For a start, the current figure for 1990 is 10.9, not 10. I wouldn't trust the maths of anyone who rounds 10.9 to 10, rather than 11. It suggests he might have an agenda, doesn't it?
The bigest problem is that he's used two incomparable figures.
The homicide rate in England and Wales is published every year. It is based on the number of homicides recorded by the police in that year, regardless of when they happened.
That figureis reduced to some extent by court cases and futher investigations, for example a death that is ruled accidental rather than homicide is removed from the figures.
That has almost no effect on the published homicide figures, because most cases, especially the difficult ones, don't come to court in the year they were committed. Typically about 30 cases are reclassified as no longer homicide in the year they are committed. The figures are then published, showing the homicide rate.
However, as cases come to court, the figure for previous years will be revised downwards. This gets included in statistical tables, but not published as a proper homicide statistic. Who's interested in crime figures for 5 years ago?
What that means is, this "professor" has usd figures from ten years ago which have been through the legal process and had non-homicides weeded out, and comparing them to homicides as recorded by the police.
His site also has a nice little graph. It's the first thing you see when you enter
At first glance, it shows the Canadian homicide rate to be slightly higher than the US rate. When you look at the scales, though, you see the US scale goes from 0 to 12 and the Canadian scale from 0 to 3
Something else strikes me about it though, the way the Canadian figures have fallen in parallel with the US figures. Is that because of all the CCW permits that were issued in Canada throughout the 90s?
