Punishment for Homicide in Europe

Abstract

This study examines punishments for homicide in Europe by compiling national-level data and presenting a descriptive account of variation. We present original data collected from various European data sources and individual researchers and highlight the problems associated with cross-national data on homicide and the limitations this poses for research. Based on available data, we offer some preliminary observations regarding regional trends in homicide and incarceration rates for homicide. Finally, we provide some suggestions for how these problems might be overcome moving forward.

Keywords

comparative crime or justice violent behavior other qualitative methods

Throughout Western countries, similar economic transformations, public opinion patterns, social developments, and crime trends have taken place over the past few decades. Punishment trends, however, whether measured in terms of imprisonment rates, average lengths of imposed sentences, preferences for or against short or long prison sentences vary widely (Tonry, 2001). These trends have resulted in large variations in punishment.

Homicide is a crime that almost all nations have historically punished severely. Punishment for this “ultimate crime” engenders broad moral and symbolic concerns in society and serves as a global barometer of national sentencing policy (Johnson, Van Wingerden, & Nieuwbeerta, 2010; Lynch, 1993). Further, the homicide rate is a reliable indicator of the general level of violence in a given society because homicide is often the end result of lesser forms of crime; higher rates of robbery, rape, and theft are usually correlated with higher homicide rates (Ouimet, 2012). Examining differences in the punishments imposed for homicide should provide an empirical base for understanding various approaches to punishment across Europe. Empirical investigations of criminal sentencing represent a vast research enterprise in criminology, but have been restricted to almost exclusively American contexts (Johnson et al., 2010). By studying variations in punishment for homicide across the European continent, we hope to make a first step in revealing ongoing regional differences in the nature of state power across the global landscape. These variations speak to fundamental aspects of the relationship between socioeconomic change, political and legal structures, and the historical forces that have shaped them (Campbell, 2012).

Theoretical Explanations

Previous explanations relating to the punishment of homicide can roughly be divided into two fields: studies assessing the global situation of variations in punishment and studies focusing on Western European countries.

Explaining Global Differences in Punishment

Arguably, one of the first and most straightforward explanations for variations in punishment of homicide concerns the total amount of lethal violence: Intuitively, one could argue that the higher the homicide rate, the harsher the punishments. With few exceptions focusing on homicide worldwide (Ouimet, 2014), this hypothesis has mainly been tested based on overall crime—hypothesizing that more severe punishment is a direct reflection of a high crime rate. Cross-national research on the relationship between criminal offending and incarceration has offered mixed findings; some studies suggests that serious offending and higher incarceration rates are linked, while regression analyses that control for socioeconomic and institutional factors point to the importance of economic processes and nation-specific institutional arrangements in explaining differences in imprisonment (Sutton, 2004). Other work finds no correlation between the overall crime rate and the incarceration rate (Aebi & Kuhn, 2000). Rather, the incarceration rate depends largely on the length of the imposed custodial sanctions, which in turn is a reflection of the nature of the punitive system.

Explaining Differences in Punishment Between Western Countries

Garland (1996) suggests that penal policies and practices in Western countries generally parallel those of the United States and the United Kingdom, with the United States as a notable outlier in their use of capital punishment (Garland, 2010). He uses the complex interactions between socioeconomic change and state institution centralization to explain national punishment tendencies. These types of explanations, Tonry (2004) has pointed out, do not hold when examining the overall imprisonment rates per 100,000 since the 1970s: while the United States and the Netherlands experienced steadily rising imprisonment rates, the imprisonment rates in other Western countries such as Germany and Scandinavia remained stable, and in Finland these rates even declined.

Instead, Tonry (2007) relies on indirect indicators to explain variations in punishment over time and region. Based on his extensive cross-national research on the use of incarceration, he identifies conflict political systems, elected judges and prosecutors, particular forms of sensationalist journalism, Anglo-Saxon political cultures, and a predominant view that criminal justice policy falls appropriately within the province of public opinion and partisan politics as the key predictors of higher incarceration rates. In England, for example, few elected politicians are likely to believe that they could continue their political career if they would announce a reduction in the prison population or a call for lower sentences (Tonry, 2004). In addition, Tonry (2007) holds that income inequality serves as a predictor of higher punitiveness: Greater inequalities in income might produce greater status differentiation and with it greater selfishness among the privileged and less sympathy for people in socially distant social strata.

Protective factors, Tonry (2007) continues, or indicators for lower punitiveness include consensus political systems, nonpartisan judges and prosecutors, and Francophonic political cultures. For example, French political culture—as opposed to its Anglo-Saxon common law systems—can sustain a call for shorter sentences and a reduction in prison population. Savelsberg (1994) has suggested that this might be associated with institutional arrangements that shape knowledge about crime and the best ways to respond to it. America’s more politicized system, for example, lacks the types of institutional insulating factors more common in Germany’s federal system. Another protective factor includes a predominant view that criminal justice policy falls appropriately within the province of expert knowledge and professional experience. In line with Tonry’s protective factors, Frank Zimring and David Johnson (2006) argued that nations with democratic institutional structures that insulate crime policy from public pressure are less punitive. Research examining the considerable variation in punishment practices across the 50 states in the United States has generally confirmed these findings. This research suggests that state structure and political cultures more prone to crime’s politicization are more likely to have higher incarceration rates (Campbell, 2014) and that penal change is contingent on socioeconomic factors such as crime and institutional crises (Campbell & Schoenfeld, 2013). Higher rates of violence might generate more punitive responses but only under specific institutional and historical circumstances.

These lines of research suggest that political and institutional arrangements differentially translate popular concerns rooted in nation-specific conditions into particular forms of penal regimes. As Tonry (2004) holds, what all countries have in common is that policy drives the degree of punishment, measured in imprisonment rates. Public officials chose the penal policies, influenced by underlying public opinion, and changes in attitudes and political concerns.

So far, it remains a question to what extent these theoretical perspectives can explain international differences in punishing the most violent crime of all: Homicide. Addressing this question is particularly relevant, given its policy implications: It is imperative that decision makers in various countries know how their sentencing practices fare in comparison to other countries surrounding them. Although most countries will follow proportionality principles in punishing their offenders, the problem is what Von Hirsch (1985) called the “ordinal proportionality,” or how one country anchors its punishment scale.¹ There are hardly any principles that guide one to determine whether an intentional homicide should be punished with 10, 15, or 20 years of imprisonment. Relying on current practices in bordering nations is one way to determine whether sentencing practices appear consistent with neighboring nations. For European regions, however, this question has remained unanswered.

Aim

The aim of this study is to describe international differences between European nations when it comes to punishment for homicide. Second, we aim to explain these differences by assessing the relationship between the severity of punishment for homicide and indicators including the overall homicide rate, the homicide offender prison population rate, and proportion of homicide offenders among sentenced prisoners. In doing so, we examine to what extent these international differences on punishing homicide offenders reflect broader notions of punitiveness.

Method

Data Sources

Statistical data tracking the actual sentences served and completed punishments imposed by various European nations are rare and much of it is unreliable (Campbell, 2012). National-level differences in legal cultures, institutional structures, and administrative processes regarding data collection and dissemination make it impossible to gather comprehensive reliable data. Therefore, we rely on a compilation of three main data sources on the sanctioning of homicide offenders and on the homicide rate by country.

First, we use the Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics SPACE-I data, which provides information on a 2008 survey of European nations and includes the prison population rate (Aebi & Delgande, 2010).

Second, we make use of the fourth edition of the European Sourcebook of Crime and Justice Statistics (Aebi et al., 2010), which covers the years 2003–2007, and provides information on the homicide rate and the average sentence served for intentional homicide (including attempts) and completed intentional homicide. We base the homicide rates for the Netherlands, Finland, and Sweden on the European Homicide Monitor (Liem et al., 2013), and use the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC, 2013) Global Study on Homicide to retrieve the homicide rate in Belgium. We consulted the Handbook of European Homicide Research (Liem & Pridemore, 2012) to complete homicide rates that were unreported in the European Sourcebook.

Third, in an effort to address the dearth of reliable data, we gathered original data by contacting individual researchers in countries with missing data to guide us to nation-specific sources. Thus, we are able to present the most comprehensive account of punishment for homicide currently available.

Operationalizations

The rawest indicator of the level of punitiveness typically used in comparative studies is the imprisonment rate (Kommer, 1994), or the average number of people held per 100,000 population, primarily because it is most readily available. Other indicators for punitiveness include the number of people sent to prison per year per 100,000 population as well as factors such as probability of prosecution, conviction, or incarceration (Blumstein, Tonry, & Van Ness, 2005). However, when it comes to comparing punishing homicide offenders, some of these indicators lose their internal validity, as the certainty of conviction for homicide is generally very high—as well as the certainty of imprisonment (Blumstein et al., 2005; Kommer, 1994). In operationalizing punitiveness for homicide offenders specifically, we relied on average length of imposed noncustodial sentence, the presence of life imprisonment without parole, and the presence of capital punishment.

We derived potential indicators for the variation in homicide sentencing partially from the SPACE-I data. This indicator includes the prison population rate of prisoners sentenced for homicide (sentenced prisoners per 100,000 whose final sentence is homicide, including attempts; Aebi & Delgande, 2010). Indicators obtained from the European Sourcebook, research literature and individual researchers include the homicide rate (number of intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants), the presence of capital punishments, the presence of life sentences without the possibility of parole, and the average sentence imposed for intentional homicide (length of unsuspended custodial sanctions and imposed upon adults, in months).

We conducted Spearman’s correlation tests to examine the relationship between the homicide rate and the rate of prisoners convicted for homicide. European countries were clustered according to geopolitical boundaries: Central and Eastern European countries include former communist states in Central, Southeast, and Eastern Europe; Northern European countries include the Scandinavian countries; Western European countries comprise countries in North-West Europe, while Southern European countries refer to the Mediterranean nations. To improve readability, very small countries and city-states such as Gibraltar, San Marino, Liechtenstein, and Montenegro were excluded. Azerbaijan, Kosovo, and Serbia were excluded as a result of insufficient available data.

Results

Extreme Measures of Punishment: Capital Punishment and Life Imprisonment

As our results illustrate, there is some consistency across regional patterns and considerable variation across individual nations in punishment for homicide in Europe for countries that provide reliable data. Only Belarus retains capital punishment as a possible punishment for homicide, and only the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Switzerland, and Bulgaria exercise the ability to imprison offenders for life without the possibility of parole (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Capital punishment, life sentences without the possibility of parole, and convicted prison population per 100,000 for intentional homicide in Europe.

However, not all homicide offenders are subjected to life imprisonment without parole and some nations retain technical clauses that limit its use (i.e., Slovakia only imposes life for repeat offenders). The vast majority of nations have eliminated these most punitive responses to homicide. The presence or absence of capital punishment and life imprisonment appears to be unrelated to the homicide rate: Bulgaria and Slovakia retain low homicide rates compared to its neighbors who do not impose life sentences. Similarly, Belarus’ homicide rate is average in relation to other Central and Eastern European countries, where capital punishment has long been abolished. The same can be concluded for the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom: Homicide rates in each of these countries are much lower than some of their Western European counterparts, where life imprisonment is not imposed.

Mapping Punishment for Homicide Throughout Europe

Utilizing the number of months that prisoners are sentenced for homicide across Europe as indication for punitiveness presents a similarly diffuse picture (see Table 1). Overall, the lack of sufficient reliable data makes elementary statistical analyses of variation in punishment for homicide of limited value, and this makes sophisticated analyses that might control for intervening factors unfeasible. However, a regional analysis of the average homicide rates and the convicted prison population for homicide reveals several variations. While there is considerable missing data, there is a general pattern reflecting a correlation between homicide rates and convicted prison population for homicide by country, r_s (28) = .652, p < .001. Figure 1 and Table 2 illustrate relatively consistent regional patterns when comparing Central and Eastern Europe to the rest of the continent: Central and Eastern European countries have disproportionate levels of punitiveness (reflected in the relatively high rate of convicted prisoners serving time for intentional homicide), both in comparison to their homicide rate and in comparison to other European regions. In Central and Eastern European countries such as Albania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldova, for example, this rate ranges from 36 to 55 per 100,000. Russia appears to be a notable outlier with 71 per 100,000 (see Figure 1). In contrast, Northern and Southern European countries have lower homicide rates and lower levels of punitiveness.

Table 1.

Homicide in Europe: Rates and Sentencing Characteristics.

Cluster	Homicide rate^a	Convicted prison population per 100,000 for intentional homicide^b	Custodial sentence imposed for completed homicide^c
Central and Eastern European countries
Albania	11.3	40	—
Armenia	3.2	19	—
Belarus^d	8.4	—	—
Bosnia-Herzegovina	4.9	—	—
Bulgaria	3.3	14	—
Croatia	6	13	74
Czech Republic	2.2	13	—
Estonia	8.9	55	—
Georgia	14.6	11	—
Hungary	3	2	126.9
Latvia	5.2	36	—
Lithuania	8.7	47	—
Macedonia	4.4	—	—
Moldova	5.3	38	—
Poland	2.8	13	—
Romania	4.2	31	—
Russia	19.3	71	141.6
Slovakia	1.7	—	145
Slovenia	3.8	5	107.8
Ukraine	6.9	44	—
Northern countries
Denmark	3	—	141.6
Finland^d	2.3	12	109.2
Iceland	2.3	5	—
Norway	1.8	4	153.1
Sweden^d	1	6	—
Western countries
Austria^e	1.5	—	2
Belgium^f	2.1	9	—
France	3.4	6	204
Germany	3.2	6	—
Ireland	—	8	—
Luxembourg	—	7	—
The Netherlands^d	1.3	—	112
Scotland	18.4	17	74
Switzerland	2.6	—	—
United Kingdom	2.6	12	—
Southern countries
Greece	2	6	—
Italy	3.6	—	—
Portugal	—	—	150
Spain	—	6	57.8
Turkey	3.6	3	—
European median	3.6	11	110.6
European mean	5.6	18	96.9

^a European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics (data on 2006).

^bSPACE I data (table 7; data on 2008).

^c European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics; individual national agencies (see Appendix).

^dSourcebook of European Homicide Research (Liem & Pridemore, 2012).

^eThe custodial sentence for homicide in Austria is not a typo—these figures stem from the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics.

^fUNODC Report on Homicide (data on 2006).

Table 2.

Average Homicide Rates and Average Convicted Prison Population per 100,000 for Intentional Homicide, by European Region.

Cluster	Homicide rates	Convicted prison population per 100,000 for intentional homicide
Central and Eastern European countries	6.30	28.25
Northern countries	2.08	6.75
Western countries	4.39	9.29
Southern countries	3.07	5.00

With the exception of Finland, the homicide rate in Northern Countries is among the lowest in Europe. The length of custodial sanctions imposed on homicide offenders, however, appears to be unrelated to the low homicide rate: While in Norway, the homicide rate is among the lowest of this geopolitical cluster, the months of imprisonment for homicide is among the highest. Iceland, Norway, and Sweden are relatively similar in the proportion of prisoners sentenced for homicide: The prison population rate of incarcerated homicide offenders hovers around 5 per 100,000, with Finland again being a notable exception.

The results further show that the homicide rate in Western European countries varies widely, ranging from 1.5 per 100,000 in Austria to 18.4 per 100,000 in Scotland, but is far lower than even the lowest Eastern and Central European nations. All indicators of punishment vary widely, but seem to be unrelated to the homicide rate: While on average, France appears to impose the longest custodial sentence for homicide, it occupies a mid position in terms of its homicide rate. On the other end of the spectrum, Scotland’s high homicide rate is not reflected in its relatively short custodial sentence.

Southern European countries further illustrate the diffuse relationship between indicators of punitiveness and the homicide rate. For example, even close neighbors such as Portugal (150 months) and Spain (57.8 months) sentence homicide offenders to sharply different terms.

Discussion

In the last two decades, the homicide rate in Europe has remained fairly stable (Aebi & Linde, 2012) and is considerably lower than other areas of the world. This can be explained by the relative degree of wealth in European countries, as economically advanced nations have more efficient police and judicial institutions and a better developed safety net compared to less wealthier nations (Ouimet, 2012). Its stable homicide rate can be ascribed in part to the relatively low and stable rates of firearms possession in Western European households and to the consistent quality of health services (Aebi, 2004). In spite of this stability, as these findings show, both the homicide rates and the average lengths of sentences for homicide show much variation.

Findings

Perhaps the most poignant—and at the same time, painful—finding is the absence of reliable, uniform statistics when it comes to the punishment of lethal violence. We can, however, based on the findings we do have, begin to speculate somewhat about patterns across nations.

Clearly, homicide rates and overall trends in punishment differ markedly, both within clusters and between clusters. It may be argued that the relatively small number of cases per year in terms of the population allows for much variation in the homicide rate. Still, this explanation does not suffice: Notable within-cluster differences in homicide rates include the relatively high homicide rates in Finland (compared to its Northern counterparts) and Scotland (compared to other Western states), which may both be attributable to the pronounced role of alcohol in these events (Lehti & Kivivuori, 2012; Scottish Consortium on Crime and Criminal Justice, 2011). Indicators of punitiveness in these countries, however, do not neatly follow suit.

Zooming in on differences between Western European countries, Garland’s (1996) notion that punishment in Western countries runs parallel to the United States does not neatly explain the differences in punishment of homicide between other European geopolitical areas. The same accounts for Tonry’s (2004, 2007) assertions about the punitiveness of Anglo-Saxon systems: Of all Western countries, only the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Switzerland employ life sentences without the possibility of parole. Ireland, another Anglo-Saxon case, lacks such a sentence.

Aside from these particular sentences, comparing Western European and Southern European clusters, rather than individual nations, reveals cautious support for Tonry’s (2004, 2007) observations: The Western European cluster, with an Anglo-Saxon political orientation, has an overall higher rate of prisoners convicted for homicide compared to the Southern European cluster, characterized by Francophone judicial systems.

The differences between clusters are most apparent in comparing Central and Eastern nations to the rest of Europe. High homicide rates and long sentences for homicide offenders in Russia and several Eastern European nations suggest that something very powerful persists within these nations’ political cultures that allows government to exercise its power well beyond thresholds acceptable in most of the large democratic European nations. Exploring the links between the persistence of violence, political culture, and punishment in these nations promises to shed some light on the relationship between political culture and government. As Pridemore and Kim (2006) suggested, their sheer size and histories of authoritarian rule might help explain the continuing high levels of violence and concomitant punishment characteristic of many former Soviet Bloc nations: Swift political change following the transition toward democratization and marketization—which stress individual freedoms, goals, rights, and responsibilities—has arguably led to societal deregulation and anomie and, in turn, to higher homicide rates. Other factors that explain the relatively high homicide rate in Central and Eastern European countries include specific historical conditions, hazardous alcohol consumption, social structural factors such as poverty and family instability, and individual-level factors such as education and marriage (Lysova, Shchitov, & Pridemore, 2012). As our findings suggest, the statistically significant association between punishment of homicide and the homicide rate may simply constitute a reflection of the substantial volume of lethal violence in these countries (Ouimet, 2014).

Alternatively, it may be argued that the relatively harsh punishment of homicide in Central and Eastern European countries reflects underlying structural economic and social inequalities. It has become a widely acknowledged fact that to enter a nation’s prisons is to dwell among its poorest, least educated, most socially isolated, and dishonored (Muller & Wildeman, 2013). Social inequality in the world outside the prison, in other words, predicts the distribution of inmates inside it. Greater inequalities might lead to greater status differentiation and with it greater selfishness among the privileged and less sympathy for people in disadvantaged social classes (Tonry, 2007). More research, including more extensive data collection allowing for multivariate analyses, is required to closely assess the nature of the relationships between inequality and punishment of homicide specifically, so as to provide more definitive answers on this intriguing observation.

In sum, as outlined previously, considerable research (Tonry, 2004, 2007; Savelsberg, 1994; Zimring & Johnson, 2006) suggests that more punitive responses to crime might be linked to factors that more tightly bound public opinion and criminal justice policy. But the consistently higher rates of punishment in Eastern European nations might reflect something else. While these nations are technically democratic, their political histories and cultures are quite different from European nations with much longer histories of democratic government. Explaining state responses in these nations might require a more complex conceptualization of state power that acknowledges the cultural vestiges of their authoritative pasts. As Garland (2010) has suggested, punishment is bound up within a complex web of social and political factors and nascent democracies might require explanations that more directly address punishment’s role in legitimizing state authority and power. Yet, before we can adequately test these assertions, there is a crucial need for uniform, reliable data on measures of punishment of this specific offense. In that regard, let us now turn to ways in which we can resolve this pressing issue.

Moving Forward: A Roadmap for Progress

Despite widespread support for cross-national investigations of crime and justice, remarkably little contemporary research investigates sentencing across borders (Johnson et al., 2010). Investigating sentencing outcomes in international context can substantially advance contemporary research and theorizing on punishment practices. In this study, we aimed to move in this direction by analyzing patterns in punishment of homicide throughout the European continent. As these findings show, the complexity of national legal and political frameworks makes the study of punishment for homicide or any other specific crime a difficult endeavor (Campbell, 2012). Precise definitions of homicide are diffuse (Smit, de Jong, & Bijleveld, 2012); some nations combine incomplete homicides with completed homicide as a singular legal entity, and include infanticide and aggravated assaults, while others offer a variety of distinctions based on the severity of the crime, age of the offender, mental state, and other mitigating factors (Aebi & Delgande, 2010).

Similarly, as Kommer (1994) points out, comparison of just one (or two) measures for punitiveness (e.g., the imposed length of imprisonment) does not take into account the structural differences between criminal justice systems. Another limitation of using the length of imprisonment as our primary indicator leaves out possible reductions such as parole, pardon, early release, and so on. Taking these into account might change the picture again; unfortunately, however, data are only available for a very limited number of countries (see Kommer, 1994).

Perhaps the clearest implication from our findings is the need for a more coordinated and standardized data collection on punishment on the European continent, and punishment of lethal violence in particular. One of these standardizations should include the operationalization of punitiveness. In this contribution, we operationalized punitiveness as the total number of months imposed for intentional homicide, the convicted prison population for homicide, and the use of life sentences without the possibility of parole. Snacken (2010), however, rightly points out that punitiveness has both a quantitative and a qualitative dimension, which goes beyond rates and time spent in prison. It is, she holds, “a complex, not always clearly defined concept. It refers in general to ‘attitudes towards punishment’, including, but not limited to: political discourse; primary criminalization by legislators; decisions taken by practitioners within the criminal justice system” (Snacken, 2010; p. 274). Unfortunately, so far no reliable cross-national data exist that allows for comprehensive comparisons on such a level.

Moving forward, we suggest that European criminologists cooperate in creating a data clearinghouse that would facilitate more sophisticated analyses that might help illuminate how and why countries vary in how they punish offenders. Future collaborative efforts forged through the European Society of Criminology, the European Homicide Working Group, or other professional forums might help overcome the extreme variation in linguistic, legal, administrative, and institutional norms and processes across Europe. The European Homicide Monitor (Ganpat et al., 2011; Liem et al., 2013), in its present state including three European countries (Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden), may provide a suitable platform to meet this aim. While collecting reliable data poses a serious challenge, a cooperative and collaborative centralization of European data might stimulate new ways of thinking about how and why various states and cultures react to serious violent offending in particular ways.

Footnotes

Appendix

Table A.

Sources for Data on Homicide Sentences in Europe.

Country	Availability of Data	Specifications
Albania	No data available
Andorra	No data available
Armenia	SPACE-I data	No separate figures on attempts and completed homicide available
Austria	SPACE-I data
Azerbaijan	No data available
Belarus	No data available in spite of contacting experts
Belgium	No data available
Bosnia and Herzegovina	No data available
Bulgaria	No data available in spite of contacting experts
Croatia	Croatian Bureau of Statistics
Cyprus	SPACE-I data
Czech Republic	SPACE-I data	No separate figures on attempts and completed homicide available
Denmark	Danish Ministry of Justice
Estonia	No data available in spite of contacting experts
Finland	SPACE-I data
France	SECRÉTARIAT GÉNÉRAL
Germany	No data available in spite of contacting experts
Georgia	No data available in spite of contacting experts
Gibraltar	No data available
Greece	No data available in spite of contacting experts
Hungary	SPACE-I data
Iceland	No data available in spite of contacting experts
Ireland	No data available in spite of contacting experts
Italy	No data available in spite of contacting experts
Kosovo	No data available
Latvia	No data available in spite of contacting experts
Liechtenstein	No data available
Lithuania	No data available in spite of contacting experts
Luxembourg	No data available
Macedonia	No data available in spite of contacting experts
Malta	No data available
Moldova	No data available in spite of contacting experts
Monaco	No data available
Montenegro	No data available
Norway	KRIPOS
Poland	SPACE-I data	No separate figures on attempts and completed homicide available
Portugal	SPACE-I data
Romania	No data available
Russia	Academy of MVD in Omsk
San Marino	No data available
Scotland	SPACE-I data
Serbia	No data available
Slovakia	SPACE-I data
Slovenia	Inštitut za kriminologijo pri Pravni fakulteti v Ljubljani
Spain	Instituto Nacional de Estadistica
Sweden	SPACE-I data	No separate figures on attempts and completed homicide available
Switzerland	SPACE-I data	No separate figures on attempts and completed homicide available
Turkey	No data available in spite of contacting experts
The Netherlands	SPACE-I data
Ukraine	No data available in spite of contacting experts
United Kingdom	SPACE-I data	No separate figures on attempts and completed homicide available

Authors’ Note

We thank the anonymous reviewer for drawing our attention to this point.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This research was supported by a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship grant in the project 299875.

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