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- Homicide is the 3rd leading cause of injury death for children 0 to 14 years of age throughout the European Union.
- The World Health Organization defines homicide as fatal injuries inflicted by another person with intent to injure or kill by any means.
- Worldwide, injuries resulting from firearms are estimated to be 5 fold higher than deaths.
- Homicide rates may be attributed to factors such as including socio-economic inequalities, availability of lethal weapons and cultural beliefs and attitudes.
- A study in England and Wales showed that intentional injury is responsible for an average of 335 deaths of children and teenagers each year and unlike for unintentional injury, there has been no reduction in death rates from intentional injury, which now accounts for 25 per cent of all injury deaths.
The principle personality and behavioural factors linked with youth violence are:
- hyperactivity/impulsiveness
- poor behavioural control
- attention problems
- history of early aggressive behaviour
- low educational achievement
Key family factors associated with adolescent violence are:
- poor supervision of children by parents and
- harsh physical punishment to discipline children
- parental conflict in early childhood
- low socioeconomic status of the family.
- The countries with a high number of youth homicides are those experiencing rapid social and economic changes, such as certain countries in south-eastern Europe, compared to low youth homicides in Western Europe. Furthermore, for every young person killed by violence, an estimated 20-40 receive injuries that require hospital treatment.
- Two common profiles of child homicides exist. The first is one of the parents shooting all of the children and committing suicide afterwards. The second is defined as a ‘fatal child abuse’ and involves very young children whose cause of death is the result of a cranio-cerebral trauma from battering or shaken baby syndrome. The majority of these child homicides occur in the home and the perpetrator was known or related to the child.
- Parental socio-economic status was found to be the single most important determinant for parents committing homicide on their children.
- Access to a firearm in the home triples the likelihood of unintentional firing, compared with a home in which no firearms are present. Firearm injuries are much more likely to result in death than are other injuries for which children and youth visit emergency departments, due to the danger of firearms. Male youths 15-24 years old are particularly at risk for firearm death.
This information has been taken from the Fact sheet on Homicide published by the Alliance in October 2006. This fact sheet including the references to the information above is available here.
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