Explaining Long Term Trends in Violent Crime

Explaining long term trends in violent crime.

The text is a facsimile of the print edition. Gurr and others have demonstrated that the long-term development of homicide rates in Europe follows a U-shaped curve: There is a fairly steady (though non-linear) decline since the 17th century (or even earlier, in some regions) till the middle of the 20th century, and a fairly steady increase since the 1960s. It is tentatively assumed in this arti...

Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime

Research on the history of crime from the thirteenth century until the end of the twentieth has burgeoned and has greatly increased understanding of historical trends in crime and crime control. Serious interpersonal violence decreased remarkably in Europe between the mid-sixteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Different long-term trajectories in the decline of homicide can be distinguishe...

Violent Crime in Australia: Interpreting the Trends

Fear of violent crime is greater today than in recent memory. So too are Australian police statistics on the incidence of violent crime. The interpretation of crime statistics and of public attitudes should, however, be undertaken with care. Even before this year’s tragic massacre at Port Arthur, most Australians had formed the impression that violence in our society had reached unprecedented l...

Long-Term Trends in the Sources of Boston Crime Guns

Displaying Violent Crime Trends Using Estimates from the National Crime Victimization Survey

Initiated in 1972, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is an annual sample survey of households in the United States conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Currently, 45,000 households are in the sample. All household members age 12 or over, or approximately 94,000 residents, are interviewed twice yearly about incidents in which they were the victims of a crime during t...