I didn’t do much research into other cross-country crime measures so I’m definitely curious to learn more about other ways of getting at this.
But to me the most obvious reason to favor homicide is reporting. Partially because it’s fresh in my mind, I’d recommend The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (from 1967). Starting at page 25 they go through changes in reporting that caused huge blips in measured crime in the US. I think the authors may have wanted to play down the crime increase for political reasons, but even discounting them somewhat they do identify issues in measurement that could easily persist today and be way worse in other countries.
I didn’t do much research into other cross-country crime measures so I’m definitely curious to learn more about other ways of getting at this.
But to me the most obvious reason to favor homicide is reporting. Partially because it’s fresh in my mind, I’d recommend The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (from 1967). Starting at page 25 they go through changes in reporting that caused huge blips in measured crime in the US. I think the authors may have wanted to play down the crime increase for political reasons, but even discounting them somewhat they do identify issues in measurement that could easily persist today and be way worse in other countries.