‘The great murder mystery’ or explaining declining homicide rates

Abstract

Despite what might be believed from reading media reports on violence in general and lethal violence in particular, the rate of homicide has decreased over time. Depending on the time frame used, this decline is more or less dramatic. When compared in the longest possible terms – medieval and early modern times – the decline is not only dramatic, but also sudden. Depending on how frequencies are estimated, in the seventeenth century the homicide rate fell as much as to a hundredth of its previous level! The frequency has thereafter remained relatively stable since the eighteenth century. It is this ‘mysterious’ decline I would like to explore here.