Whenever the Police or lawful citizen kills an offender lawfully the case report made at the time by Police is still classified as "Homicide" for reporting purposes.
No, the FBI has a separate category of "justifiable homicide" for such cases. The FBI reporting rules are very clear on this.
Justifiable homicide—Certain willful killings must be reported as justifiable, or excusable. In the UCR Program, justifiable homicide is defined as and limited to:
* The killing of a felon by a peace officer in the line of duty.
* The killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by a private citizen.
Because these killings are determined through law enforcement investigation to be justifiable, they are tabulated separately from murder and nonnegligent manslaughter.
Same thing with prison homicides. They kill each other all the time but looking at the stats you couldnt tell if it was in a maximum security prison or the White House lawn.
I'm not sure if the FBI figures include prison homicide, but it's not going to change the figures much either way. In 2002, the last year I have seen statistics for, there were 68 homicides in prisons and jails in the US. The rate for incarcerated criminals is just under 4 per 100,000, substantially lower than the rate for the US as a whole.
So again statistics are very misleading. And another thing, if a visitor from England were to visit the USA and if they stayed out of gang infested minority areas of inner cities then his chances of being killed by a gun in America are about as much as his chances are back home.
I'm not sure what the rates for holidaymakers are, as they tend to engage in very different activities on holiday. But excluding gang violence, you are still far more likely to be shot and killed in the US than the UK.
I'll bet 90% of this nations homicides are committed by poor,urban people of color where both the offender and victims are also people of color, and it might be more then 90%.
According to the FBI, about half the murders in the US are committed by whites, half by blacks.
And the other 98% of America? Most of all the places where lawful citizens are legally armed? No doubt safer then Britain.
Safer in that you are less likely to be mugged? Possibly, although if you take out the worst 2% of Britain, no.
But safer as in less likely to get murdered? No.
The murder rate for the whole of England and Wales, which includes inner cities like London, Gtr Manchester etc, is 1.4 per 100,000.
The only US states that beat that are:
New Hampshire 1 per 100,000
North Dakota 1.3
South Dakota 1.2
That's 3 out of 50 states that are safer than the British
average.
If you look at England and Wales by police force area, not a single force has a murder rate as high as the US average. Of the 41 force areas, 20 have a murder rate lower than the lowest US state, New Hampshire. Dorset, for example, has a murder rate of only 0.28 per 100,000 people.