historical violence database
Homicide, Suicide, and Crime in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon)
(May 2010 version)
Since the late nineteenth century, government officials have gathered statistics about crime and violence in Sri Lanka. These official statistics have been analyzed with great sophistication by a number of scholars, including:
- Wood, Arthur Lewis (1961) Crime and Aggression in Changing Ceylon: A Sociological Analysis of Homicide, Suicide, and Economic Crime. Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, 51: pt. 8.
- Archer, Dane and Rosemary Gartner (1984) Violence and Crime in Cross-National Perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Rogers, John D. (1987) Crime, Justice, and Society in Colonial Sri Lanka. London Studies on South Asia, No. 5. London: Curzon Press.
The data in the spreadsheets below are compiled from these works or from the United Nations or World Health Organization.
FILES:
- Homicide rate in Sri Lanka, 1900-1990, 1995-1997, and in Columbo, Sri Lanka, 1900-1973 (WORD)
- Provincial map of Ceylon (Wood 1961:10) (JPEG)
- Provincial map of Ceylon (Wood 1961: 59) (JPEG)
- Provincial map of Ceylon (Rogers 1987: 22) (JPEG)
- Homicide rate map of Ceylon (Rogers 1987: 127) (JPEG)
- Spreadsheet on Crime and Violence in Sri Lanka (EXCEL)
- Spreadsheet on Crime and Violence in Sri Lanka (CSV)
