Chesterfield Community Mental Health Team, 42 St Marys Gate, Chesterfield S41 7TH, UK
I am writing to query the homicide statistics quoted by Dr Salib (2003). The figures he quotes for total annual homicides suggest a fall in homicide between 1979 and 2001. The source for his figures is quoted as the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Homicide statistics are easily available through the website of the ONS and from various other sources, including Home Office statistical bulletins and the House of Commons Library. For example, Richards (1999) describes homicide trends between 1945 and 1997, demonstrating the dramatic rise in rates of offences initially recorded as homicide seen over that time from around 300 or 400 a year in the 1950s to more than 700 a year in the late 1990s. The recent Home Office Statistical Bulletin (Simmons & Dodd, 2003) shows a continuing rise in this trend with 1048 deaths initially attributed to homicide in 2002/2003, although these figures are based on date of notification and thus can include deaths that actually took place in earlier years.
Dr Salibs paper appears to use data on death registrations from the ONS where there has been a conviction for murder or for manslaughter. However, the ONS assigns a temporary ICD9 code for cause of death for deaths where death was violent, unnatural or suspicious or pending the outcome of inquests and legal proceedings, which are of course often prolonged. The ONS site itself states that it is difficult to present accurate statistics on number of homicides using death registrations, which is what Dr Salib has seemingly attempted to do.
As psychiatry is faced with a Government currently determined to medicalise as far as possible the growing problem of violence in our society, it is essential that psychiatric journals present statistics on this subject in a meaningful fashion. Dr Salibs paper, although not specifically about trends in homicide over time, presents misleading data on this subject, which are neither helpful nor informative to the wider debate on violence in society.
REFERENCES
Richards, P. (1999) Homicide Statistics (Research paper no. 99/56). London: House of Commons Library.
Simmons, J. & Dodd, T. (2003) Crime in England and Wales, 2002/2003 (Home Office Statistical Bulletin 1358-510X, 07/03). London: Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate.
Salib, E. O. (2003) Effect of 11 September 2001
on suicide and homicide in England and Wales. British Journal of
Psychiatry, 183, 207
-212.
Liverpool University, Liverpool, and Hollins Park Hospital, Warrington WA2 8WA, UK
Dr Rowlands raises an important question, triggered by homicide data in my recent paper on the effect of September 11 on suicide and homicide in England and Wales. He argues that when tackling violence in our society, the current Government may plan services on the basis of information that is misleading and flawed.
The data used in my paper - in excess of 130 000 unnatural deaths (E950959 and E980989, excluding E988.8) - were obtained from the ONS in 2002 then updated in 2003; 7400 of these deaths were classed by the ONS as manslaughter and unlawful killing (homicide; ICD9 E969).
It was clearly pointed out in my paper that routinely collected data was a major limitation of the study, but I had to accept the nationally collected data from ONS as reliable and as complete as possible. It should be pointed out that before 1993, ONS data were based on year of registration of death but the data that were actually used in the analysis relating to September 11 related to the year when suicide and homicide occurred.
The paper made no reference whatsoever, implicitly or explicitly, to homicide trends in England and Wales since 1979. The only comment about trends in homicide was made in relation to seasonal variations to show that the reduction in homicide noted after August was not related to the events of September 11 but merely represented some seasonal pattern. The higher homicide figures that Dr Rowlands quoted may have been, as he rightly pointed out, the result of notification of deaths that actually occurred in earlier years.
Dr Rowlands has used the paper to make a political point about a Government currently determined to medicalise violence. I fail to see the relevance of his otherwise valid comment to this paper, the first and so far the only available literature on the effect of September 11 on suicide and homicide in countries other than the USA.
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