The world got less murderous
Global homicide fell a quarter this century — unevenly, and in one country at a price the aggregate hides completely.
The world homicide rate fell from 6.9 to 5.1 per 100,000 between 2000 and 2024 — down a quarter, and falling in 20 of those 24 years. It is one of the century's largest improvements in human safety, and it is not what most people believe is happening.
The aggregate hides two things. First, the decline is wildly uneven: Europe fell 69% while the Americas fell 11% and remain at nearly three times the world rate. The improvement is mostly somewhere other than where the coverage is.
Second, and less comfortably: the steepest national decline in the record belongs to El Salvador, from 138 per 100,000 in 1995 and 107.6 as recently as 2015 to 7.9 in 2022. Over the same years its prison population rate went from 617 to 1,659 per 100,000 — about 1.6% of the population, roughly three times the United States at its own peak. We are not claiming one caused the other, and this data cannot settle it: the timing coincides, other things changed too, and the policy carries a documented due-process controversy that no chart addresses. The United States, meanwhile, reduced homicide and incarceration together. Both facts belong on the same page.
Homicide figures are recorded crime, not ground truth. Data: UNODC and the World Prison Brief, via Our World in Data (CC BY).
The fall is not where you think it is
Europe fell 69% — from 7.8 in 2000, above the world average, to 2.4. Asia fell 41%. Africa fell 23%.
The Americas fell 11%, and still sit at 14.0 against a world figure of 5.1 — nearly three times. The global improvement is largely Europe and Asia; the region whose violence dominates coverage barely moved.
African coverage is the weakest here — many countries estimate rather than count — so read that line for shape, not for a precise figure.
@andrewdun · 2h ago
One country fell further than anywhere on earth
El Salvador was the most murderous country in this record: 138.4 per 100,000 in 1995, still 107.6 in 2015. By 2022 it was 7.9 — a 93% collapse in seven years, lower than the United States.
The second line is its prison population rate over the same period: 132 per 100,000 in 2000, 617 in 2018, 1,659 in 2024. About 1.6% of the entire population incarcerated — roughly three times the United States at its own historic peak.
What this does not show: whether one caused the other. The two are contemporaneous, and contemporaneity is not causation — gang truces and demographic change fall in the same window, and the detention-without-trial controversy around the policy is a question this data cannot speak to. Note also that the two series end in different years, so no point-in-time ratio is meaningful. A prison rate is a stock and a homicide rate a flow; they share an axis because the scale suits it, not because dividing one by the other means anything.
@andrewdun · 2h ago
And the counter-examples
The United States moved down on both counts: homicide 9.3 in 1990 to 5.8 in 2023 (−38%) while its prison rate fell from a 2008 peak of 755 to 542 (−28%). Whatever the relationship between the two is, it is not simple, and the US is the direct counter-example to any clean reading of the previous panel.
Brazil is the null case: homicide essentially flat across three decades (19.6 to 19.3) while its prison rate more than tripled (132 to 416). Colombia fell 75.0 to 24.9 (−67%), one of the largest national declines anywhere.
@andrewdun · 2h ago
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Intentional homicides per 100,000 people, worldwide. 6.9 in 2000 to 5.1 in 2024 — a 25% fall, declining in 20 of 24 years.
It is one of the largest improvements in human safety this century and it is close to absent from public understanding of crime. The 2021 uptick is visible and did not hold.
These are recorded crimes. Recording quality varies by country and improves over time, so some of any decline is a changing count rather than a changing world.
@andrewdun · 2h ago