Despite recent terrorism, wars and news coverage of local crime, criminology experts say the world has become less violent.
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Two ANU professors have challenged the view the modern world has become more violent and lethal since the Middle Ages.
Australian National University professor Roderic Broadhurst and emeritus professor Pieter Spierenburg, from the Netherlands' Erasmus University, said murder rates had declined in Europe in the past century from between 500 and 800 per million people a year to 10 to 20 per million.
"The chances of you being murdered or being seriously injured during a crime in Australia, despite what the media might suggest, is much less likely now," Professor Broadhurst said.
"If you compare us to the late 1800s and going further back, the homicide rate in Australia has remained relatively stable between 10-25 per million population for the past century and has more recently fallen from about 19 in 1993 to 13 per million in 2012.
"One hundred and fifty years ago, those numbers would have been substantially higher, around the 50-60, or even 80-90 per million people depending on location."