Antonia Linde

Crime Trends in Western Europe according to Official Statistics from 1990 to 2007

The so-called crime drop observed in the United States since the beginning of the 1990s led to an impressive number of publications in which different criminologists provide various and sometimes contradictory explanations for an evolution of crime that they had not foreseen. 1 Since 2006, some authors (e.g. van Dijk, 2006; van Dijk, van Kesteren and Smit, 2007; Rosenfeld and Messner, 2009; Farrell et al., 2011) suggest that there is also a crime drop in Europe. However, analyses of victimization studies, police statistics on offences recorded by the police and conviction statistics on persons convicted by the courts show that there is no general crime drop, because property crime and violent crime are following different trends (Aebi and Linde 2010, 2012a). As a consequence, the European debate — summarized by Tonry (2010) — should focus first on establishing the actual evolution of crime trends and, only after that, on providing explanations for that evolution.

Regional Variation in Europe Between Homicide and Other Forms of External Death and Criminal Offences

This chapter analyzes the relationship between homicide and other external causes of death such as suicide, motor vehicle traffic accidents and work-related accidents across Europe. It also compares homicide to other violent offences and to property offences. The comparison is both cross-sectional and longitudinal, identifying regional variations in rates and trends from 1970 to 2008, unless in the cases where data are available only for shorter periods of time. Data are taken mainly from the World Health Organization Statistics, the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics and the Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics. The findings suggest that opportunity-based theories provide the more plausible explanation of regional differences and trends in the various measures studied.

The persistence of lifestyles: Rates and correlates of homicide in Western Europe from 1960 to 2010

This article analyses rates and correlates of homicide in 15 West European countries from 1960 to 2010. The results show that the levels of homicide in 2010 and the trends in homicide from 1960 to 2010 are not related to any of the traditional demographic and socioeconomic predictors of crime. Homicide victimization rates show an increase from the mid-1960s until the early 1990s, and a decrease since then. Victims of both genders and all group ages follow the same trend, except in the case of infanticide, which decreased during the whole period. These results do not support the hypothesis of a homicide trend driven by the evolution of victimization of young men in public space. The authors propose an explanation based on a lifestyle approach.