There has been little research on United States homicide rates from a long-term perspective, primarily because there has been no consistent data series on a particular place preceding the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), which began its first full year in 1931. To fill this research gap, this project created a data series on homicides per capita for New York City that spans two centuries. The goal was to create a site-specific, individual-based data series that could be used to examine major social shifts related to homicide, such as mass immigration, urban growth, war, demographic changes, and changes in laws. Data were also gathered on various other sites, particularly in England, to allow for comparisons on important issues, such as the post-World War II wave of violence. The basic approach to the data collection was to obtain the best possible estimate of annual counts and the most complete information on individual homicides. The annual count data (Parts 1 and 3) were derived from multiple sources, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports and Supplementary Homicide Reports, as well as other official counts from the New York City Police Department and the City Inspector in the early 19th century. The data include a combined count of murder and manslaughter because charge bargaining often blurs this legal distinction. The individual-level data (Part 2) were drawn from coroners' indictments held by the New York City Municipal Archives, and from daily newspapers. Duplication was avoided by keeping a record for each victim. The estimation technique known as "capture-recapture" was used to estimate homicides not listed in either source. Part 1 variables include counts of New York City homicides, arrests, and convictions, as well as the homicide rate, race or ethnicity and gender of victims, type of weapon used, and source of data. Part 2 includes the date of the murder, the age, sex, and race of the offender and victim, and whether the case led to an arrest, trial, conviction, execution, or pardon. Part 3 contains annual homicide counts and rates for various comparison sites including Liverpool, London, Kent, Canada, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco.

The crime rate in the United Kingdom was highest in England and Wales in 2023/24, at **** crimes per 1,000 people, compared with Scotland which had ** crimes per 1,000 population and Northern Ireland, at **** crimes per 1,000 people. During this time period, the crime rate of England and Wales has usually been the highest in the UK, while Scotland's crime rate has declined the most, falling from **** crimes per 1,000 people in 2002/03, to just **** by 2021/22. Overall crime on the rise In 2022/23 there were approximately **** million crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales, with this falling to **** million in 2023/24. Although crime declined quite significantly between 2002/03 and 2013/14, this trend has been reversed in subsequent years. While there are no easy explanations for the recent uptick in crime, it is possible that reduced government spending on the police service was at least partly to blame. In 2009/10 for example, government spending on the police stood at around **** billion pounds, with this cut to between ***** billion and ***** billion between 2012/13 and 2017/18. One of the most visible consequences of these cuts was a sharp reduction in the number of police officers in the UK. As recently as 2019, there were just ******* police officers in the UK, with this increasing to ******* by 2023. A creaking justice system During the period of austerity, the Ministry of Justice as a whole saw its budget sharply decline, from *** billion pounds in 2009/10, to just **** billion by 2015/16. Although there has been a reversal of the cuts to budgets and personnel in the justice system, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the depleted service hard in 2020. A backlog of cases grew rapidly, putting a strain on the ability of the justice system to process cases quickly. As of the first quarter of 2023, for example, it took on average *** days for a crown court case to go from offence to conclusion, compared with *** days in 2014. There is also the issue of overcrowding in prisons, with the number of prisoners in England and Wales dangerously close to operational capacity in recent months.

The research project is a subproject of the research association “Strengthening of integration potentials within a modern society” (Scientific head: Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Heitmeyer, Bielefeld) which contains 17 subprojects and is supported by the ministry of education and research. In almost all the economically highly developed countries violent crime increased significantly in the second part of the last century - in contrast to the long term trend of decline of individual (non-governmental) violence since the beginning of modern times. The authors develop an explanatory approach for these facts which is inspired mainly by Norbert Elias´s civilization theory and Emil Durkheim´s theory on society. Detailed time series on the development of different forms of violent crime are presented and set in relation with certain aspects of economic and social structural changes in three countries and also refer to the changes in integration of modern societies. The analysis deals especially with effectivity and legitimacy of the governmental monopoly of violence, the public beneficial security and power system, forms of building social capital, economic and social inequality, precarity of employment, different aspects of increasing economization of society, changes in family structures and usage of mass media and modern communication technologies. Register of tables in HISTAT: A: Crime statistics A.01 Frequency of types of crimes in different countries (1953-2000) A.02 Suspects by crimes of 100.000 inhabitants of Germany, England and Sweden (1955-1998) A.03 Murders, manslaughter and intentional injuries by other persons by sex of 100.000 persons after the statistics of causes of death (1953-2000) A.04 Clearance rate by types of crimes in Germany, England and Sweden (1953-1997) A.05 Prisoners of 100.000 inhabitants of Germany, Great Britain and Sweden (1950-2000) B: Key indicators for economic development in Germany, Great Britain, Sweden and the USA B1: Data on the overall economic framework B1.01 Percent changes in the real GDP per capita in purchasing power parities (1956-1987) B1.02 Percent changes in GDP per capita in prices from 2000 (1955-1998) B1.03 GDP of Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom in purchasing power parities in percent og the US GDP (1950-1992) B1.04 Labor productivity index for different countries, base: USA 1996 = 100 (1950-1999) B1.05 GDP per hour of labor in different countries in EKS-$ from 1999 (1950-2003) B1.06 Foreign trade - exports and imports in percent of the GDP of different countries (1949-2003) B1.07 GDP, wages and Unit-Labor-Cost in different countries (1960-2003) B2: Unemployment B2.01 Standardized unemployment rate in different countries with regard to the entire working population (1960-2003) B2.02 Share of long-term unemployed of the total number of unemployed in different countries in percent (1992-2004) B2.03 Youth unemployment in different countries in percent (1970-2004) B2.04 Unemployment rate in percent by sex in different countries (1963-2000) B3: Employment B3.01 Employment rate in percent in different countries (1960-2000) B3.02 Share of fixed-term employees and persons in dependent employment in percent in different countries (1983-2004) B3.03 Share of part-time employees by sex compared to the entire working population in different countries (1973-2000) B3.04 Share of un-voluntarily part-time employees by sex in different countries (1983-2003) B3.05 Share of contract workers in different countries in percent of the entire working population (1975-2002) B3.06 Share of self-employed persons in different countries in percent of the entire working population (1970-2004) B3.07 Shift worker rate in different countries in percent (1992-2005) B3.08 Yearly working hours per employee in different countries (1950-2004) B3.09 Employment by sectors in different countries (1950-2003) B3.10 Share of employees in public civil services in percent of the population between 15 and 64 years in different countries (1960-1999) B3.11 Female population, female employees and female workers in percent of the population between 16 and 64 years in different countries (1960-2000) B3.12 Employees, self-employed persons in percent of the entire working population in different countries (1960-2000) B4: Taxes and duties B4.01 Taxes and social security contributions in percent of the GDP (1965-2002) B4.02 Social expenditure in percent of the GDP (1965-2002) B4.03 Social expenditure in percent of the GDP (1960-2000) B4.04 Public expenditure in percent of the GDP in different countries (1960-2003) B4.05 Education expenditure in percent of GDP (1950-2001) B5: Debt B5.01 Insolvencies in Germany and England (1960-2004) B5.02 Insolvencies with regard to total population in different countries (1950-2002) B5.03 Consumer credits in different countries (1960-2002) C: Income distribution in Germany, Great Britain and Sweden C.01 Income inequality in different countries Einkommensungleicheit in verschiedenen Ländern (1949-2000) C.02 Income inequality after different indices and calculations in different countries (1969-2000) C.03 Redistribution: Decline in Gini-Index through transfers and taxes in percent in different countries (1969-2000) C.04 Redistribution: Decline in Gini-Index through transfers and taxes in percent with a population structure as in the United Kingdom in 1969 in different countries (1969-2000) C.05 Redistribution efficiency: Decline in Gini-/ Atkinson-Index through transfers and the share of social expenditure of the GDP in different countries (1969-2000) C.06 Index for concentration of transfers in different countries (1981-2000) C.07 Distribution of wealth in West-Germany (1953-1998) C.08 Distribution of wealth in the United Kingdom (1950-2000) C.09 Distribution of wealth in Sweden (1951-1999) C.10 Relative income poverty in different countries (1969-2000) C.11 Reduction of poverty in different countries (1969-2000) C.12 Neocorporalism index in different countries (1960-1994) D: Perception of safety D.01 Satisfaction with democracy in different countries (1976-2004) D.02 Revenues and employees in the private security sector in different countries (1950-2001) D.03 Decommodification-Score in different countries (1971-2002) E: Demographics E.01 Birth rates: Birth per 1000 women between 15 and 49 years in different countries (1951-2001) E.02 Fertility rate in different countries (1950-2004) E.03 Marriages per 100.000 persons in different countries (1950-2003) E.04 Share of foreigners of the entire population in different countries (1951-2002) E.05 Internal migration in different countries (1952-2001)