From the beginning of the year until July 17, a total of 19 people lost their lives, i.e. were murdered in Montenegro. The National Police told CdM all of these cases had been solved adding that ten people were arrested. In a statement for the CdM portal, lawyer Milos Vukcevic explains the number of murders doesn’t match the number of victims, as official records are kept based on the number of criminal offenses, not the number of victims.
“From 1 January to 17 July this year, seven murders and two criminal offences – aggravated attempted murder – were committed resulting in the death of victims following the legal qualification by the competent prosecutor’s office. It may thus be concluded that a total of nine murders were recorded in this period, all of which have been solved,” the police say.
However, lawyer Milos Vukcevic explains that “the difference arises from the way official records of criminal offenses are being kept – they’re based on the number of offenses, not the number of victims. So, if several people are killed in a single incident, involving one perpetrator and one murder (for example, a mass shooting), it’s often recorded by police and prosecutorial statistics as a single criminal offense of murder although there are multiple victims.”
According to him, international and national statistics (e.g. UNODC, EUROSTAT, MONSTAT) typically use the number of committed murders – not the number of victims – when calculating homicide rates.
“This means that if a single criminal offense involves multiple victims, it is still counted as one murder for the purpose of calculating the homicide rate,” the CdM interlocutor explained.
That, he stresses, may “soften” the real picture of violence.
