The dark figure of crime
A dark figure is a person who commits certain crimes and also has matters on their record. It means that the person has taken part in actions that can be considered as criminal or illegal. That’s why it’s very important for you to understand the meaning of this figure. Rolled up your sleeves and willing, you will begin to dust off old crime figures, until you reach the French judicial statistics of 1826.
As well as wondering for what quaint reason the French distinguished between murders committed with “knives” and “cutting instruments”, you’ll find that scholars at the time were already questioning the accuracy of the figures. Adolphe Quetelet, in 1833, makes one of the first formulations of what is known as “black figure of crime”.
This expression reminds us that not all the crimes that are committed form part of the statistics: there are those in which the victims are not aware that they are committing such crimes -such as crimes of corruption or many related to organized crime-, those that They are not reported because they think they are of little importance or that the police will not be able to do anything, or those who remain silent for fear of reprisals, as has happened for so long with gender-based violence.
Sensitivity changes
But you will not be stopped by this methodological setback and you will continue to be submerged among old statistics. Then, in Evolution of crime in Spain, the doctoral thesis of Mary Brigid O’Reilly, a researcher at the University of Navarra, you will learn that, in the mid-nineteenth century, Spanish judicial statistics included crimes such as “the attempt to vary the religion Catholic, Apostolic and Roman” or “the celebration of public acts of foreign worship”.
The increase not only illustrates that more crimes have been committed, but also how, in terms of gender violence, the behaviors punished and the people considered victims have increased.
“Indeed, what we consider a crime is changing over time. Now there is more awareness of gender-based violence, as is also the case, for example, with crimes against the environment. The statistics reflect these changes in sensitivity,” Mary tells us. Brigid O’Reilly in a telephone conversation.
The impossible comparisons
Once you’ve taken note of these details, you’ll run into a third hurdle: cross-country comparisons are thorny. If you thought that statistics were nothing more than neutral tools, you will be surprised to learn of the following case, during which they became a diplomatic weapon.
During the summer of 2016, in response to Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström’s criticism of a Turkish law. The image doesn’t read very well, but it says: “Traveller Warning! Did you know that Sweden has the highest rape rate in the world?” Indeed, Sweden has one of the highest rates of this crime, but that is because it applies a much broader definition of rape than other countries, which, without corrections or explanations, invalidates any comparison. And this happens with all crimes: because they are social constructions, not material objects, each country counts them in its own way (and, sometimes, according to its interests).
Other problems
And the list of reasons that make our task impossible does not end here. There are apparently inconsequential arguments that also affect crime rates. For example, that victims report more those crimes for which they can collect insurance compensation. Or that if the health services of a country improve, it is likely that the statistics of completed homicides will fall, because the wounded are saved before the number of victims is increased.
But it is not advisable to throw in the towel, but to better consider the question. The correct formulation, although it does not fit in any headline in the world, should be: “How do we commit crimes in Spain in the light of imperfect statistics that do not account for part of the crime, that depend on a specific historical moment, that in each country are accounted for differently and are also influenced by apparently inconsequential reasons?
It is important that we not be discouraged because, although the statistics are not a mirror of reality, but rather a blurred photo, they do represent progress: they allow the authorities to better target their policies against crime, and allow citizens to hold their rulers to account and that we know where crime is going. “We must not revile what we have. As a society, any information is extremely valuable,” reminds us Fátima Pérez, director of the Crime Observatory of the Malaga Institute of Criminology (ODA).
What is the homicide rate in Spain and what is its evolution?
Global crime figures put disparate behaviors in the same bag, from a homicide to the songs of a rapper, which, what do I know, in a very far-fetched case, offend the monarchy. In fact, there are countries like France that, as Mary Brigid O’Reilly explains in her thesis, directly refuse to give global crime figures.
For this reason, in the first place, we will focus on the rates of murders and homicides, which, although they actually represent a tiny percentage of crime, are the media crimes par excellence.
From a criminological point of view, moreover, they are the crimes that best overcome the limitations mentioned above, because in developed countries there are usually no “dark figures” and because, unlike the definition of “rape”, in almost all countries we call “homicide” the same thing.
In Eurovision we will not eat a donut, but in homicides, what? Hey? Europe?
There is no single explanation for why Spain is, only behind Austria, the European country with the fewest homicides. The researchers talk about the influence that, on these indices, the permissiveness of countries with weapons, the influence of political systems (are there more or fewer homicides in conservative countries?) and socioeconomic and educational factors (are there more or less homicides in countries with more inequalities?), among other things.
Be that as it may, “in terms of crime, everything is multicausal and there is no study that alone explains the differences between countries in the number of homicides,” concludes Fátima Pérez.
Regarding the trend of recent years in Spain, the following graph shows a progressive decrease in homicides and completed murders. The green bars in the graph show the annual number of these crimes. Meanwhile, the black line shows the number of homicides and murders per 100,000 inhabitants. We are not alone in this, but, according to Eurostat, it is something that is also happening in the rest of Europe.
