Homicide in Germany

Abstract

In the chapter on Germany, some background information on the German society is given, followed by a description of the legal definition of homicide in German criminal law and summary of existing research on homicide in the Federal Republic. Next, the two main sources of homicide data, the police crime statistics and the causes of death statistics, are discussed. In the main section, trends in homicide are described using time series starting in 1953 (Western Germany) resp. 1993 (including the former GDR); for some variables, data are available only for more recent years. The presentation of trends is followed by sections on the regional distribution of homicides (homicide rates for the Lander and large cities; homicide rates by class of the size of the municipality), characteristics of homicides (offender–victim relationship; use of guns; perpetration under the influence of alcohol; relation between municipality of residence of the perpetrator and location of the crime), victims (sex and age), and perpetrators (sex, age, citizenship status, dependency on hard drugs). There will be also a section in which the knowledge on patterns with respect to modus operandus is summarized; it will contain a special subsection on sexually motivated killings of children. The final section is devoted to a discussion of explanations specific to Germany (or to be more precise, the question if there is something special about German homicide trends, or if they fit well into a global trend across industrial countries – extant interpretations for such a trend are discussed as well) and policies (like recent legislation regarding domestic violence), which might have played some (indirect) role in the recent decrease of homicides.