An Analysis of Violent Crime From an International Perspective: Positions, Configurations, and Shifts
This study utilizes Principal Component Analysis on data from 23 countries between 2017 and 2023 to reveal that similar homicide rates can mask distinct socio-economic configurations and that organized crime actors are primarily associated with specific combinations of development, fertility, and urbanization factors rather than a single crime metric.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Violent crime is rarely a story of a single number. For decades, researchers have looked at homicide rates as a primary way to measure how safe a country is, treating the death toll as a direct reflection of poverty, inequality, or the strength of the police. This approach assumes that if two nations have the same number of homicides, they are facing the same kind of problem. However, this view often misses the complex web of conditions that surround violence. Just as a single note in a song tells you little about the melody, a homicide rate in isolation tells you little about the social landscape in which it occurs. To understand why violence happens where it does, scientists are increasingly looking at the entire picture: how income, education, family structure, urban life, and the justice system fit together. This shift in perspective moves the focus from asking "how much" violence there is to asking "what kind" of world produces it.
In a recent study published in October 2026, researcher Leonardo de Andrade Carneiro from the Federal University of Tocantins applied this broader lens to the global stage. Instead of simply ranking countries by their homicide counts, he mapped them into a multi-dimensional space using data from 23 nations between 2017 and 2023. By analyzing 161 snapshots of these countries over time, the study examined how homicide rates interact with six other key factors: the number of people in prison, average income, how many people live in cities, a measure of human development that accounts for inequality, and the rate of births to teenage mothers. The goal was to see if countries with similar murder rates actually lived in similar worlds, or if they occupied different positions within a complex social landscape.
The analysis revealed that the world of violent crime is not a single line stretching from safe to dangerous. Instead, the data formed two distinct directions, or dimensions, that define how countries relate to one another. The first and most dominant direction separates nations based on a broad mix of development and demographics. On one end of this spectrum, countries tend to have higher incomes, better human development scores, and lower rates of teenage births. On the other end, nations face lower development, higher poverty, and more teenage births. In this dimension, homicide rates move in lockstep with these conditions: higher murder rates are found alongside lower development and higher teenage fertility. This suggests that for many countries, lethal violence is deeply embedded in a specific configuration of social and economic challenges.
However, the study uncovered a second, equally important direction that cuts across the first. This second dimension is defined less by income and development and more by the relationship between urbanization, the prison system, and homicide. Here, the pattern is different. Some countries with high murder rates also have very high rates of urbanization and a large number of people behind bars. Others with similar murder rates do not share this specific combination of city life and incarceration. This finding is crucial because it proves that two countries can have the exact same number of homicides but occupy completely different spots in the global landscape. One might be a developing nation struggling with poverty and youth demographics, while another might be an urbanized society grappling with the specific dynamics of city life and punitive justice. They share a magnitude of violence, but their configurations—the way their social properties are arranged—are entirely distinct.
The study also tracked how these positions changed over the seven-year period. It found that countries are not static; they shift within this space as their social conditions evolve. Some nations moved gradually, while others crossed from one side of the map to the other, indicating a fundamental change in their overall configuration. For instance, a country might see its homicide rate stay relatively steady while its income rises or its urban population grows, causing its position in the relational space to shift significantly. This demonstrates that a stable murder rate does not mean a stable society; the underlying forces driving that violence can change even when the final number remains the same.
To add another layer of understanding, the researcher looked at the presence of organized crime, specifically mafia-style groups and loose criminal networks, using data from 2025. When these indicators were overlaid onto the map, a clear pattern emerged. The presence of these organized criminal actors was strongly linked to the first dimension of the map. Countries with high scores for mafia-style groups and criminal networks tended to cluster on the side of the map characterized by lower human development, lower income, and higher homicide rates. Interestingly, these criminal actors showed no significant link to the second dimension involving urbanization and incarceration. This suggests that while organized crime thrives in specific socio-economic environments, it does not necessarily define the relationship between city life and the prison system in the same way.
The ultimate conclusion of this work is a rejection of the idea that violence can be understood through a single metric. The study shows that similar homicide rates do not imply similar countries. A nation with a high murder rate could be struggling with deep-seated developmental issues, while another with the same rate might be dealing with the unique pressures of rapid urbanization and a heavy prison system. By distinguishing between the magnitude of a problem and the configuration of the society that holds it, the research offers a more nuanced way to see the world. It suggests that to truly understand violent crime, we must look at the entire system of relationships that surrounds it, recognizing that the same number of deaths can tell very different stories depending on the world in which they occur.
Drowning in papers in your field?
Get daily digests of the most novel papers matching your research keywords — with technical summaries, in your language.