murder rates

For Neil, I have not been able to find homicide statistics going all the way back to deep into Victorian times, but I have been able to find homicide statistics for the last century in this PDF from the House of Commons research department. These where already corrected for population growth being measured per million population in England and Wales. I've graphed them to show up any trends.



I expected there to be quite a bit of noise, homicide being a rare crime, and was surprised that there is a very striking set of trends. Before the Second World War the homicide rate was slowly falling, but afterwards it started to rise dramatically. So something dramatic must have changed to society at this point to cause this change in criminality, and the only thing that I can see could to affect the whole of society in such as large way was the introduction of the Welfare State.