An answer to the crime numbers. Sort of.

Well, I recieved a reply from "Statistics Canada" on the data. Here's what they had to say:

Good afternoon,

As you have discovered first hand, making international comparisons can be difficult.

My understanding of the INTERPOL table is that for infraction 1. Murder, the column "Number of cases known to the police" includes attempted homicides, while the attempts column shows the % which are attempted (ie. attempted homicides, theft, etc.).

In the case of Switzerland in 2002, there were a total of 213 homicides (including attempts). Of which, 59.6% (or 127) are attempts. In the UN report sorted by country, we find Switzerland's table on page 341 of 373. Line 2.3 of the UN report shows a matching figure for attempted homicides (127).

For our part, Statistics Canada does not include attempted homicides in the overall homicide rate. As a result when we calculated the homicide rates we removed the 127 homicides before calculating the rate.

So my understanding is that the UN report, INTERPOL and Statistics Canada are in fact all correct, just that the numbers are presented differently. Hopefully this is the case with the other numbers you were concerned with as well.

Should you require further conformation I suggest you contact the Swiss Federal Statistical Office directly. Their website address, along with many other statistical offices may be accessed from the "External links" page, which you may access off our home page by using the link at the bottom left.

As an aside, I would recommend to you that you continue to do research on what comprises a homicide in each country. There are countries, which include attempted homicides in the aggregate homicide rate, while others include vehicular homicides, and/or abortions.

Good luck

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So basically, when the Swiss reported the numbers to the UN, they included both attempted and successful homicides under the "Completed" category w/ a separate listing for the attempted as a percentage of that number. The UN then reported the total number as "Completed" along w/ a separate catagory for "Attempted" as additional criminal activity thereby inflating the numbers.

Completed. Complete. Yeah, I could see where that could have some translation issues.

So the Swiss numbers were/are not actually 2.5+ but in the low ones.

The continued problem? As was stated here by the CDOJ and by INTERPOL, none of it is consistent across the nations. So much for Hemenways' international correlations and implied causality. But I'm sure he "controlled" for that as well.