Murder / Homocide rates in Poland

I'm looking at a Wikipedia map of homocide rates and see that Poland has one of the lowest rates, especially among countries with over one million people. Only 256 homocides in 2016 with a murder rate lower than that of Denmark, New Zealand, and Sweden.

I don't think of Poles as being violent, but was still a bit surprised to see such a low number.

Now look up the amount of people killed on the roads vs those countries.

OK I found the list of countries by traffic-related death rate. Poland doesn't score as well, but still better than Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Serbia, and the USA.

What do you think the reason is for Poland having so many traffic death? Unsafe roads, drinking, speeding, not paying attention?

What about pedestrians being struck by cars? Is this frequent in Poland?

Driving too fast and too aggresively is probably the main one.
Alcohol too.

It used to have the worst road death rate in the EU. maybe that's changed, though I suspect it's still high on the table.

People used to excuse the high accident rates by saying it's the fault of the roads. No it bloody isn't; the worse the road is, the more carefully and safely you should drive...

I found the condition of the roads to be quite good in Poland, but the taxi drivers did drive too fast at night.

Of EU countries, only Lithuania has a higher rate.

The number of homicides has risen to 519 in the year 2017, an increase of 50 in relation to the previous rate - acording to the Rzeczpospolita daily. So according to your data, the number in 2016 was 256, but according to my source, the number was 469.

A big difference! Here are numbers for the years (liczba zabójstw w Polsce; source: Komenda Główna Policji):
2014 - 532
2015 - 502
2016 - 469
2017 - 519

I used the list of countries by intentional homocide rate on Wikipedia. Maybe it's the "intentional" part that's the source of discrepancy. In any case, 519 is still fairly low given Poland's population of nearly 40 million.

Still, it's almost twice as many as you've given. To say that it is low, you have to compare the rates rather than numbers

What's the difference between 'intentional' and 'unintentional' homicide? Homicide is always intentional, I think. Unintended killing would be called 'manslaughter', I think.

Could you post a link to your source?

true..tho, about 3 million young poles reside outside Poland,and most of those are people between 20- 40 years old.
this 20-40 group are most likely to commit crime.old pensioners and kids are far less likely.Poland is becoming elderly care home
but then again,there are 3 millions young Ukrainians in Poland.

After EU entry, in some small towns the crime rates plummeted. Largely because a particular demographic who can sadly be a murderer or a victim of murder (young, male, poor. drinkers, unemployed etc) had moved elsewhere to seek gainful employment.

Stats are for murders in Poland. They include murders that happened in Poland regardless of the citizenship of the perpetrator or the victim. Poles abroad can and do sometimes get murdered or murder others.

well,there are millions of young ukrainians in Poland..still crime rate is low in Poland ,despite just a fraction of resources spent on prevention compare to western countries.

@Ziemowit
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate?wprov=sfti1

It's possible to kill someone by accident when you were only trying to beat him up. I suppose that would not qualify as an intentional homicide.

Manslaughter could be unintentionally running over a pedestrian while speeding.

That's indeed possible, How would you qualify, for example, the recent murder of the mayor of Gdańsk.who was stabbed, but survived the attack for a time-being and died only later in hospital?


That would be a fatal road accident and would not go into the statistics of unintentional homicide.

I'm not a lawyer, but in my mind the death of the Gdansk mayor became an intentional homicide once he died of his wounds.

It's difficult to make precise comparisons across countries due to the differing legal defintions of crimes across countries, states, and regions.

Nonetheless, the figures provide a ballpark indication of a country's violent crime.

In the UK it would be death by dangerous driving, due to the speeding.


It would be difficult for any lawyer to say it was unintentional given the killer's announcement over the microphone and the fact that he stabbed him several times.

Merged:

Polish escapee suspects wanted! Preferrably alive.

Have you seen this man? And know his whereabouts? Allegedly, he escaped to Switzerland after causing a one-punch death of a known sportsman, a wrestler, in the street.

Olgierd Michalski

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Ukraine does have relatively high homicide rates committed with cold weapon, but really low rates committed with help of a firearms. Still much lower than in Russia.