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Speaking of the difficulty of displaying data - your business page currently features a sub-header that reads: "New innovations make the clean-up easier".

"New innovations"? Now how does that slip through the editorial net?

you forgot to record the teenage suicides in wales

Around half of the homicides are of ethnic minority origin, mostly black. Government immigration policy and calamitous attempts at social engineering is largely responsible for the teenage violence we see today in the same way that the threat of terrorism is attributable to the stupidity of leadership prior to the invasion of Iraq.

3. At 5:49pm on 16 Dec 2008, yydelilah wrote:
Around half of the homicides are of ethnic minority origin, mostly black. Government immigration policy.. "" .. prior to the invasion of Iraq.
+
and nobody didn't care they just called up the god damn gravedigger

Tall-Poppy: The invention of the aeoplane was an innovation. It's certainly not new.

I would be interested to see future years pinpoint how many are `gang related`? The age of the perpetrators? and so on. That information usually comes to light later during the trial, not the initial reports of the victim`s death. That may mean revisiting this years figures again in twelve months time.

It`d be good if you kept this up on a year on year basis, and for other age groups.
As well as doing your own research (online news stories I assume) readers could also send in links to local sources that report such cases, just to make sure you get as much info as possible. I`d be happy to help with contributions from my city for example.

I`ll also point out that gangs are often fuelled by the profits from the drugs trade and homicides can be the result of turf wars, disputes over unpaid debts etc; often a hidden story behind the headlines. This is important in order to see is there is any rise in gang/drug related killings comparable with the USA in the `70s and `80s.

Also, to put the deaths of these 70 teenagers into perspective; looking at deaths of a younger age group it has been (recently) revealed that more than three children a week, a total of 210, died in England and Wales as a result of abuse between April 2007 and August 2008.


The family is still the most dangerous place for children.
It may be worth tracking these deaths year on year as well.

Steve....
Thanks for the excellent idea about, displaying data...

Readers should look at the debate on Mark Easton's two blogs on this subject before reading this article, which displays the same kind of sensationalism and sloppy journalism you complain of in others!

As the text makes clear that the data is of homicides (all violent deaths including manslaughter, victims of domestic violence and straightforward assault) why does your headline still say "murder"? And one of the victims wasn't even a teenager (aged 11).

In any case "teens" (or "teenagers" in the UK) includes adults of 18 and 19; 32 of the deaths were of adults.

If you wanted to do a piece about teenage murders you should have excluded the non-murder homicides and arguably distinguished between those under and over 18. But that would give significantly smaller figures, still far to high but not telling quite the same story.

Or is it just that a more accurate headline of "Analysing homicides of young people aged 10-19" simply takes up more space and isn't as snappy and "Mapping UK's teen murder toll"

And as #6 says, children are much more at risk from their families than from stangers or gangland shootings. But that's not news, is it?

A few observations:

1. 2008 isn't over yet.
2. Where is the context. Comparisons to previous years, comparisons to other countries.
3. Hardly surprising London has the most murders, the population is 7.5 million. Population related statistics are usually compared using rates per 100,000.
4. I'm glad I don't know a teenage murder victim as the constant use of their picture in news items would really upset me.

#9

Agree. This looks more like an assignment for a GCSE than a piece of serious investigative research. It is repeating what we already know without adding anything at all.

There is a strong feeling amongst those on the ground that social engineering has allowed gang cultures to fester. When it is easier to make a living from illegal activity than it is from having a steady job then murders and serious assaults will continue to rise. The average person carrying jewelery, a watch, an i-pod, a mobile phone, and a wallet or purse is an easy target for anyone needing money for drugs etc. especially if the area they work in is controlled by a gang.

Government policy must do many things now to stop the growth of an underclass that is threatening to produce serious anarchy on our streets. It must influence the minds of the young and very young and prove to them that they have a future richly endowed with hope and optimism no matter what culture, class, creed or domestic circumstances they have. It must innovate to produce integration and an end to discrimination, not through crass laws but through the hearts of its peoples. It must prove that we are all valued and worthy of a decent life by not treating people as money making machines who can be dumbed down into working clones. It must challenge the increasingly appalling values of those of its larger companies and corporations who are happy to fleece the poorest in order to indulge the richest.

It is not going to do any of those things from this piece of work. Sorry ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ - try again.

"If you wanted to do a piece about teenage murders you should have excluded the non-murder homicides and arguably distinguished between those under and over 18."


arguably words to ever prevent the author pf such silly words being taken seriously.

A teen is a teen not a social invention of post war governement.

To demarcate people by an accident of birth is pure folly and only worthy of self paid academics.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

I would just like to make comment regarding the latest death in Afghanistan of Sergeant Christopher Reed, could you please correct your journalist with regards to the spelling of Sergeant, it is also referred to as sjt and should be presented as Sgt. I am sure personnel of the HM Forces would like to see the correct spelling for ranks, particularly when it is referring to another tragic death

thank you

It's interesting to see the data, but I'd be more interested in a discussion about why teen suicides are so prevalent, what pressures help to cause them, and how we might best prevent them. For example, there are numerous examples of teens following instructions on websites of how best to commit suicide, and there are countless other twenty-first century pressures that didn't even exist several years ago; discussion of these would certainly make for an interesting topic.

Henry

Mixed feelings here.
Having watched 'who's watching you' by Richard Bilton and commented on that particular blog, referring to data collection and cross-referencing of specific personal data, I'm at odds with this one.

Statistics need to be collected, for many reasons, insurance (proven and noted by Henry) is one of them. Data protection and Freedom of Information - to policies head to head here - who has the right to know?

Becoming a statistic was a figure of speech, but being murdered means just that, and now in a much more graphic way, for anyone, any member of the public, to be able to research and review your death.

Yes, collect this data. Yes, put it on a map, and yes, link it to all murders, manslaughter, whatever - collectively homicide - and make it available to the authorities in a controlled manner. Have the numbers made available to those who need to know for their business (insurance for instance), but please, can we not go down the road of having a national viewable public database of all homicides, with internet links to the stories to show how they died with pictures and journalistic analysis.

Collect the data. Use it sensibly. Let the dead rest in peace.