Homicide in Switzerland from 1990 to 2014: Study on forensic medicine, police and court files

1990-2014

Switzerland

The project consists of a database containing all intentional, completed homicides in Switzerland from 1990 till 2014. Information about the offender, the victim and the circumstances of the offences are collected. The offences are categorized into different types of homicide to give consideration to the heterogeneity of this offence. Data were collected in the context of two different SNF-projects. The first one (1990-2004) has already been published (homicide in Switzerland over twenty years [1980-2002]). For the current project, the new data (2005-2014) are completed with the old ones.

Since 1990 homicides in Switzerland have decreased from an average of 70 per year at the beginning of the 90ies to 35 offences in 2006. Since then, delicts have remained quite stable. In Switzerland, quite a lot of homicides are committed in the context of relationships with every third offence beeing a victim killed by her (or his) partner. Circumstances differ strongly between the different types of homicides.