ABSTRACT
Secondly, we will not concern ourselves with political, state-sponsored or institutionalized killing, which are complex issues with their own specific literature and potential solutions (see Green and Ward, 2004; Ruggiero, 2006). Their inclusion would significantly increase overall homicide rates. For instance, were we to factor in capital punishment and war-deaths, the USA would display a rate of killing far higher than that indicated by official homicide statistics. Something similar would occur if we were to view the rates of killing in 20th-century Europe through the prisms of both World Wars, the Holocaust and capital punishment in the period before its abolition. Adding the further lens of deaths caused by governmental/ corporate crime and negligence would complicate the matter even further (see Tombs and Slapper, 1999). However, our purpose here is to compare variations in the spatial and temporal patterns of legally defined interpersonal homicide that characterize two specific forms of capitalist economy. Thus we will focus on statistical trends of recorded incidents within territories governed by sovereign states.
