Include missing persons in crime statistics

Police statistics place the national homicide average at about 2,000 people a year. Only about half of these are classified as murders.

Deaths caused by dangerous driving or of babies (abortion, infanticide, concealing birth) account for a couple of hundred people each. Suicides have been reported as low as 235 last year and as high as 528 in 2005.

That leaves manslaughter, murder’s cousin, which hit a three-year high at 47 last year.

Missing from police records are statistics on missing persons, despite evidence these are often possible homicides and could have a bearing on the real number of deaths caused by foul play. There is also no indication of how accurate police consider their figures to be. The result is that we appear to have a lower national homicide rate than the United States, at about five people per 100,000, despite rather obvious disparities in law enforcement and investigative capacities. Something is broken here and needs fixing.

REPORTING

Crime statistics are often better indicators of prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime, than actual prevalence. Leaving out missing persons — one of the few crime statistics most likely to benefit from high reporting — makes it harder to tell what trends in other statistics mean.

We need to get to a point where the police report homicides and missing persons cases as either solved or unsolved. This way, a clearer picture of crime trends can be formed.