The 1990s Homicide Decline A Western World or International Phenomenon? A Research Note

Recent studies suggest that the United States was not the only country that experienced a drop in crime in the 1990s. However, this line of research is largely limited to a small number of developed countries and only recently has explored the extent to which homicide rates dropped in developing countries during this time. This study addresses these limitations by using group-based trajectory modeling to explore homicide trends from 1990 to 2005 in 53 developed and developing countries. The results indicate that while most countries experienced downward trends in homicide during this time, this trend was neither universal nor randomly distributed.