Homicide Rates in Africa

Charles Murray was widely lambasted a few weeks back for this Tweet:

Doesn't it make a difference to @davidafrench's argument that two of the core problems typically ascribed to centuries of American racism–elevated black violent crime and depressed mean cognitive ability–are found wherever sub-Saharan African populations live? https://t.co/ZSkSDF4BXW

— Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) July 30, 2021

Indeed, Sub-Saharan Africa isn’t that bad according to official homicide stats. For instance, Burkina Faso and Benin claim 1.3 and 1.1 /100,000 homicides, respectively, per year (from UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s International Homicide Statistics via World Bank).

But Africa is a demographic black box. For instance, we literally know more about births/deaths in mid-18th century Sweden than we do for much of Black Africa in the 2010s. WHO estimates of S.S.-African homicide rates exceed official stats by several factors.

GLOBAL STUDY ON HOMICIDE 2019: Homicide trends, patterns and criminal justice response (h/t The g Factor)

““Official” estimates are completely unreliable; where they do exist, the WHO estimates homicide rates to be many, many times higher than the official statistics. The average of the official statistics and the WHO statistics produces the graph on the right.” – (h/t The g Factor)

“International prevalence of common crime (theft and assault). Each dot is a country in that region.
What % of people report having suffered a theft or assault in the past year in surveys.” (h/t @whyvert)

Source: van Dijk, J., Nieuwbeerta, P., & Joudo Larsen, J. (2021). Global Crime Patterns: An Analysis of Survey Data from 166 Countries Around the World, 2006–2019. Journal of Quantitative Criminology.