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Interactive Map Exposes the World's Most Murderous Places

Posted by timothy on from the mustn't-talk-about-the-neighbors-like-that dept.

Lashdots writes with this selection from a Fast Company story: In 2012, 437,000 people were killed worldwide, yielding a global average murder rate of 6.2 per 100,000 inhabitants. A third of those homicides occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean, home to just 8% of the world's population. But data on violent death can be difficult to obtain, since governments are often reluctant to share their homicide statistics. What data is available is sometimes inconsistent and inconclusive. Adds Lashdots: To make this data clear and to better address the problem of global homicide, a new open-source visualization tool, the Homicide Monitor, tracks the total number of murders and murder rates per country, broken down by gender, age and, where the data is available, the type of weapon used, including firearms, sharp weapons, blunt weapons, poisoning, and others. For the most violent region in the world, the 40 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, you can also see statistics by state and city. That geographic specificity helps to underscore an important point about murders, says Robert Muggah, the research director and program coordinator for Citizen Security at the Rio de Janeiro-based Igarapé Institute, in the above-lined story: "In most cities, the vast majority of violence takes place on just a few street corners, at certain times of the day, and among specific people."

3 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Depends how it's counted. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If a gang kills 6 rival gang members in one incident, does it count as 6 murders or 1? I'd argue that such a place would actually be "safer" than having 6 independent murders taking place.

    Same goes for terrorism. If a bomb goes off killing a dozen, is it "murder" is does it fall under another category?

    Also, access to emergency healthcare is a HUGE factor. If you get stabbed in the middle of nowhere, you're a goner, if you get stabbed next to a hospital (most major western cities) and care gets to you while you're still breathing, there's a pretty good chance you'll live. So lower homicide rate doesn't tell you much about the rate of such incidents.

  2. Overly done graphic by tomhath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Aside from the gaping holes in the data for many countries, the use of a spinning globe is a nuisance. Just display a map, it doesn't have to move around.

  3. Re:Honduran Gun Control Laws. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1) Honduras is a country.
    2) Honduras was at the top of the murder list long before they enacted the gun control laws you mention.
    3) Honduras has one of the weakest, most corrupt governments in the world. It has trouble enforcing even its most trivial laws.

    So, country has runaway gun violence and enacts restrictive gun laws in response...but country's government lacks resources to enforce said laws and runaway gun violence continues.