The Murder of Women

How risky is our society for the modern woman?  The Ministry of Justice produces an annual report: Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System 2019 that details the types and frequency of crimes against women.

Every year the average Briton has slightly more than a one in 100,000 chance of being murdered.  This is about half the risk of dying in a road accident but it should be remembered that the UK now has a very low rate of road accident deaths.

In 2018/19, 671 individuals were victims of homicide in England and Wales; 64% of which were males and 36%, females.

Almost a third of male homicides occurred in the street whereas only one in 16 female homicides happened on the street.  Only about 14 women were murdered on the street over the whole year.  The safety of women does not depend on making our streets safer.

Women are generally murdered by friends and family.

Source ONS

Women were also about half as likely to suffer from any sort of violent crime as males:

The murder rate in the UK was at its lowest in the late 1950s.  This was a time when boy scouts wore large, sharp sheath knives in their belts in public and hand guns were legal.

In 1965 the death penalty was ended.

There is a paucity of data on the homicide of women before 1990 but the rate after 1997 was fairly flat at around 200-250 per year.  This suggests that in the 1950s women were a much higher proportion of murder victims although fewer women were murdered.

In recent years the homicide rate has been falling.

Overall there is absolutely no reason for the authorities to panic about the murder of women.

Women are afraid because of the mass media broadcasting tales of the murder of women almost nightly. Any calls for action on women's perceived risk of murder should address the mass media rather than agitate for new laws.

The death penalty has some effect on murders of men, especially in the USA where the murder rate is very high.  The US performed an experiment where the death penalty was ended and re-introduced.

If the US figures are correct then several thousand lives are saved in the US each year by executing about 60 people a year (of whom perhaps 5 or 10 are innocent of offences that would require the death penalty).  This is a dramatic deterrent  effect if true.  However, the UK has a much lower homicide rate than the US and correspondingly fewer calculated murders where the murderer calculates that they might as well kill a witness or enemy as let them live, given the penalties.  Executing five or ten people a year in the UK for murder might stop a couple of hundred murders a year but it is scarcely worth stirring up the opposition for such a small result.  If women do feel that the streets of Britain are objectively unsafe they should probably be campaigning to re-introduce the death penalty rather than attempting to limit freedom of movement etc. because murders on the street are probably calculated murders (psychopaths are able to weigh odds - why not kill your victim if the worst that can happen is a few years in jail?).

11/3/2021