ABSTRACT
Homicide may be defined as the killing of one human being by another (Wilbanks, 1982). In 2012, 437,000 intentional homicides occurred globally – a fairly typical year for killings (UNODC, 2013). Killings in contexts of war or other conflicts, suicides, killings during civil unrest, and other negligent and non-negligent homicides are not included in this number. Additionally, this figure includes only “successful” murders, and ignores the large, but currently unquantifiable, numbers of attempted murders that fail for one reason or another. Indeed, evidence stemming from work conducted on the “ambulance homicide” theory suggests that the homicide rate in the United States would be more than triple were it not for modern medical technology, which saves thousands of lives of would-be homicide victims (Harris, Thomas, Fisher, & Hirsch, 2002). These figures also do not include killings committed in self-defence (UNODC, 2013). Nor do they include many of the assaults that do not lead to immediate death, but rather to the victim’s death days or weeks after a police report is filed. Nor do they include attempted homicides that fail for various reasons, most notably due to the defensive manoeuvres of intended victims. The official murder rates also fail to include the potentially large number of infanticides officially classified as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), a portion of which are turning out to be intentional homicides (Becroft, Lockett, Etzel, Montaña, Dearborn, Smith, Infeld, Dahms, & Carroll-Pankhurst, 1998). For these and other reasons, current estimates of homicide rates are likely substantial underestimates of the true prevalence of homicide and attempted homicide in modern populations.
