Victims of homicide

Published

1. Main facts and figures

The data shows that:

  • in the year ending March 2023, 71.4% of homicide victims (where ethnicity was known) were from the white ethnic group and 16.9% were from the black ethnic group

  • 81.7% of the UK population were white and 4.0% were black at the time of the 2021 Census

  • 19.8% of male homicide victims and 10.1% of female homicide victims were from the black ethnic group

  • in the 10 years to March 2023, the percentage of victims who were black went up from 9.8% to 16.9%

2. Things you need to know

What the data measures

The data shows the percentage of homicide victims by ethnicity. Victims where ethnicity is unknown have been excluded.

Homicide offences include:

  • murder
  • manslaughter
  • infanticide

If several people are killed by the same suspect, the number of homicides counted is the total number of victims killed rather than the number of incidents.

Use caution when looking at longer-term homicide trends. For example, the 39 victims of human trafficking found in Grays, Essex in October 2019 are counted as 39 individual homicides.

The data is based on the year the offence was recorded as a crime, not when the offence took place or when the case was heard in court. The offence is usually recorded in the same year as it took place.

The ethnic groups used in the data

Data for the years ending March 2022 and March 2023 is shown for the 5 ethnic groups used in the 2011 Census.

Data from April 2012 to March 2021 uses the Homicide Index categories and cannot be compared with the latest data.

Methodology

Read the detailed methodology document for the data on this page.

The ethnicity of victims of homicide is recorded by the investigating police officer. Read more about differences in the quality of ethnicity data reported by individuals and third parties.

In the data file

Download the data for data by:

  • age
  • sex

3. By ethnicity

Percentage and number of homicide victims, by ethnicity
Ethnicity % Number
All 100.0 590
Asian 7.5 43
Black 16.9 97
Mixed 2.1 12
White 71.4 409
Other 2.1 12
Unknown N/A* 17

Download table data for ‘By ethnicity’ (CSV) Source data for ‘By ethnicity’ (CSV)

4. By ethnicity and sex

Percentage and number of homicide victims, by ethnicity and sex
Female Male
Ethnicity Female % Female Number Male % Male Number
All 100.0 174 100.0 416
Asian 7.7 13 7.4 30
Black 10.1 17 19.8 80
Mixed 2.4 4 2.0 8
White 78.0 131 68.6 278
Other 1.8 3 2.2 9
Unknown N/A* 6 N/A* 11

Download table data for ‘By ethnicity and sex’ (CSV) Source data for ‘By ethnicity and sex’ (CSV)

5. Data sources

Source

Type of data

Administrative data

Type of statistic

National Statistics

Publisher

Office for National Statistics

Publication frequency

Yearly

Purpose of data source

The Home Office Homicide Index contains detailed record-level information about each homicide recorded by police in England and Wales. These figures provide much more detail about the nature and circumstances of homicide offences than the main police recorded crime dataset.

6. Download the data

Victims of homicide - Spreadsheet (csv) 36 MB

This file contains the following variables: measure, ethnicity, ethnicity_type, time, time_type, geography, geography_type, victim_age, victim_sex, value, value_type, denominator, numerator, denominator_note