THE NUMBERS: Violent deaths worldwide, 2004:

Total:	740,000
Homicide:	490,000
Indirect consequence of war:	200,000
In war:	50,000

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Some good news for Washingtonians this year: the Metropolitan Police Department reports a sharp drop in murders. The 66 killings in the first six months of 2009 is the lowest murder rate recorded since 1964, and down by 75 percent from the horrific 1991 peak of 481. Not unalloyed good news, though -- the figure suggests a rate of 22.4 murders per every 100,000 people per year, still well above the 5.6-per-100,000 rate for the United States as a whole.

In international perspective, both rates are distressingly high. Some comparisons, drawn from the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, the intergovernmental Geneva Declaration group's 2007 report on violence; and the World Health Organization:

• Worldwide -- In total, there are about half a million murders per year worldwide. The Geneva Declaration's 2008 report, with the most recent estimate, suggests 490,000 "violent deaths in non-combat settings" in 2004. This figure, double the direct and indirect casualties of war, implies an average of 7.6 murders per 100,000 people per year, with about 17,000 in the United States.


• By region -- The highest murder rates are in Southern Africa, with about 34 killings per 100,000 people annually. Central America is close behind at 30 murders, followed by South America at 28. Reported murder rates in developing Asia, the Pacific, and the Middle East are much lower, comparable to the United States at 4 to 7 per 100,000. The lowest rates are in Western Europe and East Asia, both around 1.0 per 100,000.


• By country -- The highest reported national murder rates are in Jamaica, El Salvador, and Venezuela. (But note that very poor or chaotic countries do not report crime data.) The lowest rates are zero, in very small countries like the Vatican, Brunei, or Liechtenstein. For countries with populations above 1 million Singapore's rate of 0.4 murders per 100,000 people is the lowest recorded in the the UNODC's 86-country report for 2005 and 2006.


• Change over time -- Colombia, Brazil, South Africa, Europe (especially Eastern Europe) and the United States have cut murder rates, with Colombia's drop from 67 to 33 per 100,000 likely the sharpest single-country decline. Rates have risen, though, in Venezuela, Jamaica, and Central America. The Christian Science Monitor, for example, finds the murder rate in Venezuelan capital Caracas doubling from 63 to 130 per 100,000 in this decade.

Some divergences seem easy to explain. Rich countries have more professional policing, so crime rates are accordingly lower; and their better medicine means more attack victims survive. Demographically "young" and poor countries have higher unemployment rates among young men and so more potential criminals, and likewise poorer treatment of victims. Central America's high killing rate reflects youth gangs and drug trafficking; Southern Africa's contrast with the lower rates in Eastern and Western Africa, meanwhile, may emerge in part from family breakdown due to the extreme toll HIV/AIDS takes on parents in this region. And falling local crime rates, such as those in Colombia, Brazil, and Washington, can reflect improving policing, lower rates of 'crack' cocaine use, and imprisonment of habitual criminals. But other divergences, perhaps above all the low reported rates in the Middle East and South Asia -- both regions featuring the youth booms and high unemployment rates often cited as causes of crime -- remain mysterious.

FURTHER READING:

The DLC's crime and public safety home-page: http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ka.cfm?kaid=119

Analysis and data -

• The World Health Organization's 2002 World Report on Violence and Health: http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/
  violence/world_report/chapters/en/index.html
• The U.N.'s Office of Drugs and Crime reports murder rates for 2005 and 2006 in 86 countries; also retains older surveys: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en
  /data-and-analysis/Tenth-CTS-annotated.html
• The Geneva Declaration group's 2008 Global Burden of Armed Violence finds (for 2004) 260,000 deaths in war, report estimates total murder rates, regional disparities, and their economic costs: http://www.genevadeclaration.org/pdfs/
  Global-Burden-of-Armed-Violence.pdf
• Washington's Metropolitan Police Department laconically offers data on falling murder rates in Washington, D.C.: http://mpdc.dc.gov/mpdc/cwp/view,a,1239,Q,543308,
  mpdcNav_GID,1523,mpdcNav,%7C,.asp

The crime beat -

• Kingston's Gleaner on crime in Jamaica: http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/
  20090111/focus/focus2.html
  
• The Christian Science Monitor on Venezuela's rising murder rate: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1203/p06s01-woam.html
  
• The Economist on falling Brazilian murder rates and improved policing in Sao Paulo: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11975437
  

And a sample list -- not very reassuring for Americans -- of murder rates per 100,000 people for 2006 or designated year:

Caracas, Venezuela (2008):	130.0
Jamaica:	59.0
El Salvador:	58.1
South Africa:	41
Brazil:	25
Washington, D.C. (2009):	22.4
Ecuador:	18.1
Mexico:	11.0
Low/middle income countries (2000):	10.1
World (2004):	7.6
Latvia:	6.5
Kenya:	5.7
U.S. Total (2008):	5.6
Argentina:	5.2
Philippines:	3.8
Rich countries (2000):	2.9
India:	2.8
Canada:	1.9
U.K.	1.5
Japan	1.0
United Arab Emirates	0.9
Singapore	0.4