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Daily Data InsightsThe rise and fall of homicides in Europe

The rise and fall of homicides in Europe

A line graph showing the annual number of homicides per 100,000 people from 1950 to 2020 for Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Spain, and the Netherlands. They all saw their homicide rates rise and then fall over the course of the 20th century, with Italy seeing the most pronounced changes. Data source: WHO Mortality Database (2022). Note: The data is age-standardized for comparison.

Homicide rates in Europe surged in the second half of the twentieth century but have dropped over the last 30 years.

The chart shows the rates for several European countries based on data from the WHO Mortality Database.

You can see that this trend was most pronounced in Italy. Homicide rates more than doubled from less than 1 per 100,000 people in the late 1960s to more than 2 in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since then, rates have even fallen below earlier levels.

This rise and fall in homicides is relatively consistent across other European countries, although the timing and magnitude of these changes differ. France, for example, saw a wave of homicides in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Explore this data country by country

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