Murder Victims

"Homicide" is one category of the cause of death indicated in the Vital Statistics. This category can be said to be the number of deaths due to murder. In 2007, which is the most recent data available, 509 people have been killed. However, because there are prefectures in which there were no murder victims during that year and therefore single-year data may possibly be affected by individual cases, the rate of homicides by prefecture was calculated by averaging the data for the ten year period from 1998.

Firstly, below is the transition of the number of murder victims during this past ten years:

According to the above, the number of murder victims has been decreasing consistently this past ten years. Although recently, the increase in the intensity of crimes has been mentioned by the media, it does not necessarily seem to be so as far as it can be seen from the number of victims of murder cases.

The statistics by prefecture indicate that Osaka is ranked first and 0.8 persons are killed per 100 thousand population every year. Osaka is known as an area full of crimes, and the result indicated here is also evidence of that fact. For reference, the area with the highest rate of homicide in the world is Columbia, with 70 people killed per 100 thousand population.

Okinawa is ranked 2nd. Crime in Okinawa is often likned with the U.S. forces. However, because recently there are no reports on cases of murder committed by U.S. soldiers, there is probably no direct connection. However, the U.S. forces can be considered one factor creating the criminogeneric situation in Okinawa, such as higher rate of unemployment compared to the mainland.

Kagawa is ranked 3rd, which is interesting because it has no image as a prefecture with many crimes. Because the change in the number of murder victims in this past ten years has been: 7→4→10→9→5→7→7→7→9→10, there seems to be no connection with the affects of particular cases.

In general, western Japan is heavily concentrated, with areas around the Seto Inland Sea highly concentrated in particular. The rate of people living on welfare is high and the lower-income class is large in western Japan. Economic reasons may possibly be connected to the high rate of murder. The slight positive correlation with Households Living on Welfare and the rate of unemployment supports this point.

It is also interesting to note that it is positively correlated with the Rate of Single-parent Households and the rate of nuclear families and negatively correlated with the rate of double-income families and the area of privately-owned houses. This means that there are more cases of murder in areas where there are many nuclear families and single-parent households, and less in areas where there are many double-income families and large houses.