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 [doc] in Sri Lanka, 1900-1990, 1995-1997, and in Columbo, Sri Lanka 1900-1973
• Provincial map of Ceylon [jpg] (Wood 1961:10)
• Provincial map of Ceylon [jpg] (Wood 1961:59)
• Provincial map of Ceylon [jpg] (Rogers 1987: 22)
• Homicide rate map of Ceylon [jpg] (Rogers 1987:22)
• Spreadsheet [xls] on Crime and Violence in Sri Lanka
• Spreadsheet [csv] on Crime and Violence in Sri Lanka

[csv] - Some links on this page are to .csv files requiring the use of a database program. If you need these files in a more accessible format, please contact cjrc@osu.edu.

[doc] - Some links on this page are to Microsoft .doc files requiring the use of Microsoft Word. If you need these files in a more accessible format, please contact cjrc@osu.edu.

[jpg] - Some links on this page are to .jpg files requiring the use of an image viewer program. If you need these files in a more accessible format, please contact cjrc@osu.edu.

[xls] - Some links on this page are to Microsoft .xls files requiring the use of Microsoft Excel. If you need these files in a more accessible format, please contact cjrc@osu.edu.