4 ms·
I certainly would be surprised. Do you have any references? I recommend "Understanding crime data: haunted by the dark figure" as a good summary of the research
by petewarden 17y ago
I certainly would be surprised. Do you have any references? I recommend "Understanding crime data: haunted by the dark figure" as a good summary of the research on this topic.
It's easy to come up with anecdotes of particular unreported murders. The data shows that these are statistically very rare, almost every victim has a family who reports them missing even if no body is found.
- flogic 17y agoAs a completely uneducated layman, I'm skeptical of the link between murder and other crime. I thought murder more often than not is a crime of passion.
- hga 17y agoI'm not sure most of them are "crimes of passion", certainly most victims have a criminal past in the US. But, yes, it does seem to be not tightly linked to other violent crimes. But we focus on it since it's the hardest to sweep under the rug, despite that happening a lot.
- hga 17y agoWell, sort of by definition it's going to be difficult to go from anecdotes to statistics when the latter are being cooked. That's only going to be possible when there is a mirrored and honest crime survey system, where as you point out most victims will report a missing person and matching dead bodies that are not ruled a homicides might be teased out.