The French Death Investigation System And the Accuracy of Mortality Statistics in Violence Prevention

• In Event: Comparative and Cross-National Comparisons of Homicide

Abstract

Effective violence prevention programs require good information about the causes and correlates of violence. When it comes to homicide prevention, valid mortality statistics are one of the crucial tools needed. These statistics, however, suffer from many limitations, which might explain why violence prevention has encountered only limited success globally. Thanks to a peculiarity of the French medicolegal system, the current project utilizes a natural quasi-experiment to study the effects of medicolegal investigations on mortality statistics. Indeed, France implemented a new death certificate in 2018, including more specificity as per which deaths have to be investigated by medicolegal professionals. Using the French National Health Data System (Système National des Données de Santé), we compare deaths from 2016 and 2017 to deaths from 2018 and 2019 in France, and test the following hypotheses: 1) more specific information as per which deaths have to be investigated will lead to more medicolegal deaths investigations; 2) more medicolegal deaths investigations will lead to better cause and manner of death ascertainment, which can be measure by the number of proximal and distal ICD (International Classification of Diseases) causes of deaths outlined on deaths certificates.

Authors

• Melanie-Angela Neuilly, Washington State University

• Frédéric Balusson, University of Rennes, CHU Rennes

• Renaud Bouvet, University of Rennes, CHU Rennes