Editing Homicide (section)

===Historic European===
{| class="wikitable" style = "float: right; margin-left:10px; text-align:center"
|-
! Estimated homicide rates<br />in Europe{{r|eisner|p=100}}
! Deaths per year<br />per 100,000 population
|-
| 13th–14th centuries
| 32
|-
| 15th century
| 41
|-
| 16th century
| 19 
|-
| 17th century
| 11
|-
| 18th century
| 3.2 
|-
| 19th century
| 2.6 
|-
| 20th century
| 1.4
|}
In the mid-second millennium, local levels of violence in Europe were extremely high by the standards of modern developed countries. Typically, small groups of people would battle their neighbors using the farm tools at hand, such as knives, sickles, hammers, and axes. Mayhem and death were deliberate. The vast majority of Europeans lived in rural areas till 1800. Cities were few, and small in size, but their concentration of population was conducive to violence and their trends resembled those in rural areas.<ref name=eisner>{{cite journal |last1=Eisner |first1=Manuel |title=Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279936907 |journal=Crime and Justice |date=2003 |volume=30 |pages=83–142 |doi=10.1086/652229|s2cid=53317626 }}</ref>  Across Europe, homicide trends show a steady long-term decline.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Stone |first1=Lawrence |title=Interpersonal Violence in English Society, 1300–1980 |journal=Past and Present |date=1983 |issue=101 |pages=22–33 |doi=10.1093/past/101.1.22}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Thome |first1=Helmut |title=Explaining Long Term Trends in Violent Crime |journal=Crime, Histoire & Sociétés |date=1 January 2001 |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=69–86 |doi=10.4000/chs.738|pmid=19582950 |doi-access=free }}</ref> Regional differences were small, except that Italy's decline was later and slower. From about 1200 AD through 1800 AD, homicide rates from violent local episodes, not including military actions, declined by a factor of ten, from approximately 32 deaths per 100,000 people to 3.2 per 100,000. In the 20th century, the homicide rate fell to 1.4 per 100,000. Police forces seldom existed outside the cities; prisons only became common after 1800. Before then, harsh penalties were imposed for homicide (severe whipping or execution) but they proved ineffective at controlling or reducing the insults to honor that precipitated most of the violence.<ref>On the growing role of local government in reducing local feuds see Matthew H. Lockwood, ''Death, Justice and the State: The Coroner and the Monopoly of Violence in England, 1500–1800'' (2014) and his ''The Conquest of Death: Violence and the Birth of the Modern English State'' (2017).</ref> The decline does not correlate with economics or measures of state control. Most historians attribute the trend in homicides to a steady increase in [[self-control]] of the sort promoted by [[Protestantism]], and necessitated by schools and factories.{{r|eisner|pp=127–32}} Eisner argues that macro-level indicators for societal efforts to promote [[civility]], self-discipline, and long-sightedness are strongly associated with fluctuations in homicide rates over the past six centuries.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Eisner |first1=Manuel |title=From Swords to Words: Does Macro-Level Change in Self-Control Predict Long-Term Variation in Levels of Homicide? |journal=Crime and Justice |date=2014 |volume=43 |issue=1 |pages=65–134 |doi=10.1086/677662 |s2cid=144894344 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264402032}}</ref>