Elsevier

Health & Place

Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2005, Pages 45-54
Health & Place

Increasing inequalities in risk of murder in Britain: trends in the demographic and spatial distribution of murder, 1981–2000

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2004.01.003Get rights and content

Abstract

This study analyses demographic and spatial factors that underlie the rise in murder rates seen in Britain between 1981 and 2000 and considers the possible contribution of a public health approach to the understanding of murder. Comparison of murder rates by age group and sex finds that increases occurred only among males aged 5–59 years, and were greatest among males aged 20–24 years. Analysis of the relationship with poverty at the area level, using the Breadline Britain index and deciles based on wards, demonstrates that increases in murder rates were concentrated in the poorest areas. Rates of murder have risen in the same population groups and areas that have experienced increases in suicide and may be associated with worsening social and spatial inequality.

Introduction

Deaths due to homicide occupy a peculiar position in British society as one of the rarest yet highest profiles causes of death. Although murders are relatively uncommon events we are constantly surrounded by a mêlée of real life and fictional murders, in news reports, crime fiction, television dramas and on the big screen. Despite this considerable public presence there has been little academic study of these deaths in Britain.

Internationally murder has been studied within a range of academic disciplines, including sociology, history, anthropology, psychology, criminology, forensics, criminal justice, legal studies, public policy and political science. Perhaps surprisingly violence has rarely been considered as a health issue (Macdonald, 2002). This paper approaches the analysis of murder in Britain from the perspective of public health, considering murder not as a crime but as a cause of death. The analysis seeks to examine the demographic, spatial and temporal trends in these deaths in Britain over the last two decades considering the age and sex of murder victims, the characteristics of the injuries leading to their deaths, the socioeconomic status of the areas in which they lived and how the distribution of murder has changed over time.

Section snippets

Murder as a social barometer

A common theme in the study of murder is that murder can be read as a form of social barometer, indicating something of the quality of social relations, whether at the micro- or macro-level, within a society. The analysis of international patterns, or the geography of murder at the national level, is one component of this form of comparison. Fig. 1 shows homicide rates in selected countries for 1997, revealing a remarkable range of rates, with three countries standing out. The murder rate in

Recent trends in murder rates over time

There have been dramatic changes in the incidence of homicide in several countries in recent decades, in particular Russia and the USA. In England and Wales, however, data suggest there have been gradual but significant changes in the incidence of homicide. Data for England and Wales from the official Home Office homicide series, which covers 35 years, are presented in Fig. 2. This shows both the number of murders and the rate of murders, which have doubled over this time period.

The rate of

Data and methods

In this analysis we address the following questions: who was murdered, when were they murdered, where were they murdered, with what were they murdered and, finally why were they murdered. Using digitised mortality records from ONS we look at the 13,000 murders that occurred in Britain between 1981 and 2000 (we also report other figures for later years). Estimates of the numbers of murders in the analysis are based upon those deaths where the cause of death was either recorded as homicide (ICD9

The age and sex profile of murder victims in Britain

Fig. 3a shows the rates of murder in Britain by single year of age and sex, smoothed—using a simple binomial one pass filter whereby rates are calculated as half the rate of that single year plus a quarter of the rates for people a year younger and year older. Unsmoothed rates are shown in Fig. 3b, although smoothed rates are preferable as the denominator population refer to mid-year and not calendar year. For these years the overall twenty-year average murder rate was 12.6 murders per year per

Discussion

Despite public concern about violence in Britain little attention has been paid to the significance of the demographic and geographical patterns that underlie the composite rates of homicide. Murder has commonly been perceived as a matter of crime and criminology rather than as a marker of societal or public health. The immediate circumstances of particular deaths have therefore been a primary concern rather than the social and economic environment of murder as a cause of death.

The patterns

Policy implications

How can this analysis inform policies and interventions that might reduce the number of deaths due to homicide? These findings suggest policies aimed at tackling inequality and poverty are of paramount importance. The Home Office has recently published a document Reducing homicide: a review of the possibilities (Brookman and Maguire, 2003) in which the authors state: “…there is evidence of a strong correlation between homicide rates and levels of poverty and social inequality, and it may be

Conclusion

Academic researchers frequently accuse the media, in particular the tabloid newspapers, of hysteria and moral panic regarding violence but this analysis demonstrates that there has indeed been a substantial rise in murder in Britain concentrated among young males and in poor areas. Murder remains rare in Britain but the increasing risk of violent death among some population groups is a cause for concern and a neglected issue within British health research. The increase in murder in Britain

Acknowledgements

Mary Shaw is funded by the South West Public Health Observatory.

References (42)

  • V.V. Chervyakov et al.

    The changing nature of murder in Russia

    Social Science and Medicine

    (2002)
  • D. Gunnell et al.

    Sex differences in suicide trends in England and Wales

    Lancet

    (1999)
  • M. Shaw et al.

    Increasing mortality differentials by residential area level of povertyBritain 1981–1997

    Social Science and Medicine

    (2000)
  • Barclay, G., Travers, C., 2002. International comparisons of criminal justice statistics 2000. Issue 05/02, 12 July...
  • E. Baumer et al.

    The influence of crack cocaine on robbery, burglary, and homicide ratesa cross-city longitudinal analysis

    Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency

    (1998)
  • A. Bleetman et al.

    Effect of Strathclyde police initiative “Operation Blade” on accident and emergency attendances due to assault

    Journal of Accident and Emergency Medicine

    (1997)
  • A. Blumstein et al.

    The rise and decline of homicide—and why

    Annual Review of Public Health

    (2000)
  • B. Bowling

    The rise and fall of New York murderzero tolerance or crack's decline?

    British Journal of Criminology

    (1999)
  • Brookman, F., Maguire, M., 2003. Reducing homicide: summary of a review of the possibilities. Home Office Research...
  • C. Cubbin et al.

    Socioeconomic status and injury mortalityindividual and neighbourhood determinants

    Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health

    (2000)
  • C. Duncan et al.

    Context, composition and heterogeneityusing multilevel models in health research

    Social Science and Medicine

    (1998)
  • E. Durkheim

    Suicidea Study in Sociology

    (1999)
  • R.B. Felson et al.

    To kill or not to kill?

    Lethal outcomes in injurious attacks. Criminology

    (1996)
  • Flood-Page, F., Taylor, J. (Eds.), 2003. Crime in England and Wales 2001/2002: supplementary volume. Home Office...
  • D. Gordon

    Census based deprivation indicestheir weighting and validation

    Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health

    (1995)
  • C. Griffiths

    The impact of Harold Shipman's unlawful killings on mortality statistics by cause in England and Wales

    Health Statistics Quarterly

    (2003)
  • A.R. Harris et al.

    Murder and medicinethe lethality of criminal assault 1960–1999

    Homicide Studies

    (2002)
  • Helmuth, L., 2000. Has America's tide of violence receded for good? Science 5479 (28 July 2000),...
  • Karman, A., 1996. Research into the reasons why the murder rate has dropped so dramatically in New York City 1994–5,...
  • Lattimore, P., Trudeau, J., Riley, J., Leiter, J., Edwards, S., 1997a. A study of homicide in eight US cities. NIJ...
  • Lattimore, P., Trudeau, J., Riley, J., Leiter, J., Edwards, S., 1997b. Homicide in eight US cities: trends, context,...
  • Cited by (42)

    • Risk-seeking or impatient? Disentangling variance and time in hazardous behaviors

      2021, Evolution and Human Behavior
      Citation Excerpt :

      For example, studies of optimal foraging demonstrate that individuals whose average expected return on foraging is below the starvation threshold may adopt the riskier strategy to maximize the likelihood of survival (Caraco, Martindale, & Whittam, 1980; Stephens & A. B., 1981). The empirical literature in psychology and behavioral sciences indeed shows that deprived individuals tend to be more violent (Brezina, Agnew, Cullen, & Wright, 2004; Shaw, 2005; Wells et al., 2019), take on riskier jobs (Leigh, 1986; Orrenius & Zavodny, 2009; Sterling & Weinkam, 1990), and engage in riskier health behaviors (Brennan, Henry, Nicholson, Kotowicz, & Pasco, 2009; Droomers, Schrijvers, Stronks, van de Mheen, & Mackenbach, 1999; Everson, Maty, Lynch, & Kaplan, 2002; Hanson & Chen, 2007; Hersch & Viscusi, 1998; Hiscock, Bauld, Amos, Fidler, & Munafò, 2012; McLaren, 2007; Pampel, Krueger, & Denney, 2010; Pill, Peters, & Robling, 1995). Yet, as Pepper and Nettle (2017) note, this association between the “behavioral constellation of deprivation” and risk taking relies on a loose conceptualisation of risky behavior, namely activities associated with an increased likelihood of experiencing undesirable outcomes.

    • Time is money. Waiting costs explain why selection favors steeper time discounting in deprived environments

      2021, Evolution and Human Behavior
      Citation Excerpt :

      Indeed, the risk of dying or, more generally, of being incapacitated during the waiting period is one reason why a reward might never be collected. Moreover, sources of extrinsic mortality generally increase with deprivation, which can sometimes lead to substantial disparities between the most deprived and most affluent areas (Shaw, Tunstall, & Dorling, 2005). Nevertheless, several traits of the so-called behavioral constellation of deprivation involve decisions about costs or rewards that are delayed over relatively short timescales (e.g. days, months, a few years).

    • Patients with mental illness as victims of homicide: A national consecutive case series

      2014, The Lancet Psychiatry
      Citation Excerpt :

      Several factors could contribute to the vulnerability of people with mental illness to violence.14 They might be likely to live in socially deprived areas where homicide rates are generally high,18,19 and where risk factors for violence (eg, substance misuse and previous violent offending) are known to be highly prevalent.4,20 Symptoms of mental illness such as paranoia or irritability and comorbidities such as alcohol or drug misuse or personality disorder could place patients with mental illness at increased risk through conflict with other people.

    • Socioeconomic inequalities in injury mortality in small areas of 15 European cities

      2013, Health and Place
      Citation Excerpt :

      This divergence in direction of the association agrees with the findings of some review papers (Cubbin and Smith, 2002; Rehkopf and Buka, 2006). In the case of homicides, some studies conducted in the United States (Cubbin et al., 2000), Brazil (Viana et al., 2011), Great Britain (Shaw et al., 2005) and Scotland (Leyland and Dundas, 2010) have reported a positive association between homicides and area socioeconomic deprivation. However, it is important to note that few such studies have been conducted in European countries (Laflamme et al., 2009).

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text