International Journal on Criminology Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2015 | Page 8

International Journal on Criminology
of 28 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1991. This was preceded by a respite of 5 per 100,000
around 1950. According to Monkkonen, tolerance for violence will push homicides up.
Then comes a phase in which most citizens find the violence as intolerable, which will
drive it down. After some time, the buildup of actions against violent crime bears fruit
and the incidence of homicide begins to fall. When peace and security last too long,
however, people see no reason to continue cracking down on violence. The subsequent
easing up prepares the ground for another phase that will manifest itself in a fresh
upsurge in homicides.
A Century of Murders in Canada and the United States
The fluctuations in the homicide rates in Canada and the United States display
two distinctive features: the curves are in parallel and appear to be cyclical. The
figure 1 shows a century of changing homicide rates in the United States and
Canada (Ouimet 2008). With US rates four times higher than those of Canada, the
respective scales are different, as the two sides of the graph show.
Figure 1: Changing Homicide Rates per 100,000 Inhabitants of Canada and the United States,
1901–2013 (Marc Ouimet)
The homicide rates fluctuate in the same cyclical timing in both country and
are remarkably in parallel, with the US scale three to four times higher than that of
Canada. For each country, the figure shows an initial cycle beginning at the start of the
century and ending in around 1960. This is followed by another cycle, which appears
to be still ongoing at the time of writing. The figure can be divided into four phases:
1900–1930; 1931–1955; 1956–1989; and 1990–2013.
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