Introduction

Homicide can be described as a volitional act of an individual that is seen as resulting in death of another individual. In the recent times there has been an increasing concern about the homicide rate in the United States of America (Daly & Wilson, 2017). Multiple factors are observed as being the reasons for rise in the rate of homicide in the recent times. Although the UCR data published indicate that there is a decrease in the rate of homicide yet there has been a higher chance of homicide to be occurring in the United States. The reason for the increased concern for the crime of homicide in the United State has been discussed in the essay. The reason for the higher chances of men for becoming the victims of homicides is also analysed in this essay. Furthermore this essay will also be analysing the clearance rates of homicide in the USA in context with Asia and Europe.

Homicide

Homicide can be a result of any accidental, negligent or reckless conduct and can be occurring even without any intention of causing any harm or injury to another person. In the past few years there have been a significant rise in the rate of homicide in the United States and it has been the reason for concern among many (Hamill et al., 2019). As per the studies conducted by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in the years 2015-16 there has been a significant and substantial rise in the rate of homicides in the United States (Ncjrs, 2016).

 As per the Uniform Crime Report Programing (UCR) in the year 2017 on an estimate 17,284 murders happened in the United States, which can be seen as almost 0.7% decrease from the rate of homicide in the year 2016 and almost 20.7% rise from the rate of homicide in the year 2013 (FBI, 2017). In a report published by the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime in the year 2019 an average of 464,000 people were seen to be the victims of homicide globally in the year 2017. As per the report one of the major reasons responsible for homicide is organized crime. Of all the homicide happened in the year 2017 almost 19% leading towards organized crime as one of the major reasons. In the UCR it was further observed that in 2017 an average of 81% of the victims of homicides that were recorded were boys and men. The report further observed that almost 90% of the suspects in the cases for homicide were men.

The average global rate for homicide has been recorded to be the highest in the USA whereas Africa was seen to be having an average rate and the rates of homicide in Asia, Europe and Oceania were seen as below average. Although there has been a significant rise in the rates of homicide globally, yet there has been a steady decline in the overall risk of being killed by way of homicide. This is because of the faster rise in global population than the rise in the increase in the rate of recorded victims of homicide (Unodc, 2019).

Globally the clearance rate of homicide is an average of 60% that can be said as indicating that in many of the homicide cases the identification of the suspects was not possible for the police. In the regions in Asia and Europe the clearance rate is observed to be higher than the US. One of the important reasons for this difference might be said to be the possibility of the higher rates of recording of the crimes of homicide in the US than that in the Europe and Asia (Unodc, 2019).

Conclusion

In this essay a detailed discussion has been done on the increase in the rate of homicides in the recent years. The essay further discusses the reasons for the difference in the clearance rates for homicide globally. In the essay statistical data published by various government associations have been used. In a study conducted by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in the year 2015-16 it has been observed that there has been a significant and substantial rise in the rate of homicides in the United States. As per the Uniform Crime Report Programing (UCR) in the year 2017 on an estimate 17,284 murders happened in the United States. The report further observed that in 2017 almost of 81% of the homicide victims that were recorded were boys and men and the almost 90% of the suspects were also men. The average global rate for homicide was observed in the report to be the highest in the USA.

Reference

Unodc. (2019). Homicide kills far more people than armed conflict, says new UNODC study. Retrieved 20 September 2019, from https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/press/releases/2019/Juli/homicide-kills-far-more-people-than-armed-conflict–says-new-unodc-study.html

FBI. (2017). Murder. Retrieved 20 September 2019, from https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/murder

Ncjrs. (2016). Retrieved 20 September 2019, from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/251067.pdf

Unodc. (2019). Retrieved 20 September 2019, from https://www.unodc.org/documents/gsh/pdfs/Chapter_5.pdf

Daly, M., & Wilson, M. (2017). Homicide: Foundations of human behavior. Routledge.

Hamill, M. E., Hernandez, M. C., Bailey, K. R., Zielinski, M. D., Matos, M. A., & Schiller, H. J. (2019). State level firearm concealed-carry legislation and rates of homicide and other violent crime. Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 228(1), 1-8.