Challenges to the veracity and the international comparability of Russian homicide statistics
| Date | 01 July 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370818794124 |
| Author | Alexandra Lysova |
| Published date | 01 July 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370818794124
European Journal of Criminology
2020, Vol. 17(4) 399 –419
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370818794124
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Challenges to the veracity
and the international
comparability of Russian
homicide statistics
Alexandra Lysova
Simon Fraser University, Canada
Abstract
Homicide statistics are often seen as the most reliable and comparable indicator of violent
deaths around the world. However, the analysis of Russian homicide statistics challenges this
understanding and suggests that international comparisons of homicide levels can be hazardous.
Drawing on an institutionalist perspective on crime statistics, official crime-based homicide
statistics in Russia are approached as a social construct, a performance indicator and a tool
of governance. The paper discusses several incentives to misrepresent official homicide data in
contemporary Russia, including politicization of homicide statistics as a legacy of the Soviet’ era’s
falsified crime statistics and the role of policing. Mainly, the paper identifies and describes the
exact legal, statistical and country-specific substantive mechanisms that allow homicide statistics
to be distorted in Russia. By considering legal mechanisms alone, the more accurate homicide
rate may be at least 1.6 times higher than that reported in the United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime Global Study on Homicide 2013.
Keywords
Comparative criminology, homicide studies, politicization of crime statistics, production of
homicide statistics, Russia
Introduction
Homicide statistics are seen as the most reliable and comparable indicator of violent
deaths around the world (for example, Archer and Gartner, 1984), and, as such, are often
used to estimate global trends and patterns in lethal violence, to test theories and to guide
Corresponding author:
Alexandra Lysova, School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, British
Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada.
Email: alysova@sfu.ca
794124EUC0010.1177/1477370818794124European Journal of CriminologyLysova
research-article2018
Article
400 European Journal of Criminology 17(4)
policies to address homicide incidents in a country. Recent improvements in the availa-
bility of data on lethal violence have contributed to an increase in studies analysing
cross-national trends in homicide (Baumer and Wolff, 2014; Eisner, 2008; LaFree, 2005;
LaFree and Tseloni, 2006; Van Dijk et al., 2012). Although the absence of data on homi-
cide in many parts of the world still represents the most critical problem for cross-national
comparisons (Riedel and Regoeczi, 2004), this paper brings attention to the quality of
homicide data that are available and deemed generally reliable.
As a source of knowledge, crime statistics can be seen as representing the reality of
crime (the realist approach) and also as a product of social and institutional processes
(the institutionalist approach) (Coleman and Moynihan, 1996). According to the latter
perspective, analysing crime rates can help us better understand the agency producing
them rather than crime itself (Black, 1970). This study draws on the institutionalist per-
spective and examines the process of production of homicide statistics in Russia.
Criminologists in Russia have repeatedly expressed their concerns about the unsatis-
factory quality of crime statistics and especially homicide data in Russia, mainly owing to
political pressure (Babaev and Pudovochkin, 2014; Inshakov, 2011; Luneev, 2005; Lysova
and Shchitov, 2015; Shklyaruk et al., 2015). Incentives for police malfeasance in crime
statistics in contemporary Russia reflect the notorious legacy of the Soviet era’s falsified
crime statistics when they were blatantly used to misrepresent reality (Tolts, 2012). Under
the current presidency of Vladimir Putin, a strengthening focus on law and order provides
similar incentives for officials in the police and statistics departments to ‘adjust’ crime
statistics to the expected levels (Babaev and Pudovochkin, 2014; Walker, 2007). Moreover,
as in the Soviet time, the particular mechanisms of collecting crime statistics that make
misrepresentation possible are in place today (Inshakov, 2011; Shklyaruk et al., 2015;
Volkov and Paneyah, 2012). Drawing on an institutionalist perspective on crime statistics
(Coleman and Moynihan, 1996), this paper explains Russia’s low levels of police-reported
homicide rates in the 2000s as a product of political forces that create the notion of order
and stability in the country and hence drive for regime legitimacy.
This paper, however, goes beyond the mere theoretical discussion of the incentives
behind misrepresentation of homicide data in Russia. It identifies and describes the spe-
cific mechanisms that explain how differences in legal definitions and statistical rules
and procedures for collecting homicide statistics, as well as country-specific factors, can
affect homicide statistics in different ways. Given the essential role of the police in col-
lecting and making homicide data public, I discuss how the police, as servants of the
regime, contribute to the manipulation of homicide data in modern Russia. I examine
various opportunities available to the Russian police to misrepresent homicide data.
Among the three main types of opportunities or factors that affect official police-reported
homicide statistics in Russia, substantive factors germane to the established investigative
practices in relation to unidentified bodies and missing persons arguably represent the
most serious challenges to the accuracy of Russian homicide statistics (Inshakov, 2011).
My hope is that this paper will become one of the first in a series that discusses the pro-
duction of homicide data in other countries, especially where official police-reported
homicide data appear to be compromised.
This paper focuses on crime-based rather than public health homicide statistics. In
recent years researchers have tended to use homicide data generated by public health
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