penal code

昨年の日本の殺人数が戦後レベルにまで減少したという記事です。
No. of murders in Japan in 2013 drops to postwar low

TOKYO —
The number of murders and attempted murders in Japan last year fell to a post-World War II low, police figures showed Friday, dropping under 1,000 for the first time.

The National Police Agency recognised 939 unlawful deliberate killings or attempts to kill in 2013, down more than 8% on a year earlier.

An AFP tally shows that equates to around 0.74 per 100,000 people in Japan’s 127 million-strong population, making it one of the lowest in the world, according to figures produced by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

In contrast, Venezuela, where a former Miss Venezuela and her British-born partner were shot to death this week, had 79 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013, according to the country’s non-profit Violence Monitor. The government says the rate is lower.

According to a UNODC report, the United States’ 2010 rate of intentional homicide was 4.8 per 100,000; China’s was 1.0.

Japan’s most recent police statistics show overall crime dropped more than 4% on-year, with a little over 1.3 million violations of the penal code. Nearly 75% of which were thefts.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/no-of-murders-in-japan-in-2013-drops-to-postwar-low

記事の中に出てくる””penal code”を調べました。”penal”はペナルティという言葉でよく使われるので何となく意味が分かりましたが，『Wisdom英和辞典（第三版）』（三省堂）で調べると「刑法」という意味がありました。安全な国であるということはとても誇らしいと思います。（Ume）