Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
Cristina Yu wrote:
You didn't mention Japan. Japan's such a safe place that they're murder rate is almost as low as the murder rate for Americans of Japanese descent. Almost, but not quite.
Wrong. Kleck says this on page 189 of "Point Blank", but he looked up the wrong number (2.45) for the Japanese homicide rate.
Unless you consider self-murder, that is, in which case, it's rather high. Their suicide is higher than our murder rate plus our suicide rate combined.
Not any more (though it used to be true):
1990 rates per 100k population from WHO Statistical Yearbook
homicide suicide
US 10.1 12.6
Japan 0.6 16.4
(Interestingly, the male suicide rates in Japan and the US were identical (20.4))
Not to mention that their commonest form of violent death is for a parent to knife the kids, then (if the parent is male) the wife, then make an attempt (successful or not) on him/herself. (If hubby is having a hard time with his career, it is EXPECTED that his wife will unburden him in this manner --- and that she'll succeed when she goes for herself.)
In the US we call that a "murder-suicide" and count one suicide (or suicide attempt) and N-1 murders. In Japan they call it "multiple suicide" or "family suicide" and count N suicides.
Untrue. The WHO breaks deaths down by age. In 1990 there were 47 child (under 14) suicides in Japan. That's a rate of 0.2 per 100k children. (For comparison the US rate was 0.5.)
