Lethal and non-lethal violence trends across subtypes in England and Wales: Exploring offender, victim and incident characteristics.

• In Event: Trends in lethal and non-lethal violence

Abstract

Violence results in substantial and widespread social, financial, and economic harm. Homicide is undoubtedly the most serious form of violence: not only does it result in the physical loss of life, but also in problems for surviving families and friends, neighbourhoods and communities where the crime was committed, and the broader society. Since early 1990s crime trends which from the decade following WWII had been on the rise started falling across many industrialised countries, a phenomenon known as the international crime drop. Whilst similarly to other crime types homicide rate in England and Wales had been on the rise since the beginning of the Home Office Homicide Index data in early 1970s, this trend was reversed between in the early 2000s lagging non-lethal violence drop by about ten years. However, although non-lethal violence has continued to fall, homicides rose between 2014 and 2017 (ONS 2024).
The current presentation examines the patterns in rising and falling non-lethal violence and homicide rates in England and Wales over a period of comparable data series to detect any leading subtypes that drive the overall trend to inform future prevention. To this end, aggregate lethal (homicide) and non-lethal violence rate trends are disentangled across subtypes defined by the following individual level characteristics: (i) demographic characteristics of victims and offenders (e.g. age, sex, and ethnicity); (ii) circumstantial characteristics of incidents (e.g. location, weapon use, alcohol and substance abuse); and (iii) victim-offender relationship and motive. The analysis of lethal violence relies on the Home Office Homicide Index and that of non-lethal violence on the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

Authors

• Emily Gray, University of Warwick

• Andromachi Tseloni, Nottingham Trent University

• Stephen Farrall, University of Nottingham