Murder 1957 to 1968
| Date | 01 May 1970 |
| Published date | 01 May 1970 |
| Author | R. J. Buxton |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1970.tb01275.x |
REPORTS
OF
COMMITTEES
MUBDEB
2957
TO
1968
THE
final abolition of capital punishment seems
so
much like a good
deed
in a naughty world that
it
has understandably overshadowed
the survey of recent murders published shortly before the crucial
parliamentary debates,‘. and this obscurity was
no
doubt assisted
by the feeling generated by a quick reading of the Report
or
of
newspaper accounts
of
its findings that,
as
many people already
believed, murder was conspicuously
an
area in which statistics
prove nothing. Two important issues do, however, stand out
as
requiring elucidation from the material presented in the Report.
(i)
Capital
punishment and
capital
murder
The prime difficulty facing anyone who tries to use the material
to inquire into the effects
of
the abolition
of
capital punishment
is that, although this is
a
Report by the Home Office Statistical
Division, it contains
no
statistical analysis of any
sort.
We can
only speculate whether this means that the Home Office thinks
that,
on
a question as important as this, the general public should
be content with the blunt facts,
or
whether there
is
thought to be
something about these figures that makes them unsuitable for the
statistical treatment which we attempt below. Certainly, the
authors of the Report do not refrain from impressionistic comment
;
it would surely have been better and safer for them to have dis-
cussed also the statistical implications of figures which they are
better placed than anyone else to understand, rather than leave
these deductions to the possibly unreliable operation of private
enterprise.
Table
10
of the Report reads as follows:
“
Normal
”
and abnormal murder estimated as
“
capital
”
1967
1968
1969
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1966
1966
1967
1968
“Normal”
murder
II
Abnormal murder
“Capital”
No.
%
12 21.1
11 23.4
9
16.8
11 21.6
7
13-0
4 7.1
7 11.9
10 13.2
17 22.1
29 33.0
24 26.7
26 27.1
“Non-
“Non-
capital’’
No.
%
1
Murder
1957
to
1968.
A
Home
Office
Statistical Division
Report
on
in
England
and
Wales.
802
Total
No.
yo
78
100
67
100
78
100
72
100
64
100
73
100
63
100
69
100
68 100
34
100
64 100
52
100
Murder
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