ИСТИНА

The study of the social deviance expansion is "new ground" for the Russian socio-economic geography. Social deviations are understood as the complex socially important phenomena manifested in to stable (in time and space) forms of human activities that do not meet the performance standards and/or expectations. The most important endogenous characteristic of deviant activities is their focus: the deviation can be both negative (all types of crime, suicide, drug addiction, etc.) and positive (socially significant creativity in all its diversity: art, music, science, technology, etc.). Also social deviations differ in the degree of latency depending on the evidence of the ultimate impact and results. The least latent forms of negative deviant phenomena that have sufficient factual basis for carrying out a comparative study are intentional homicide and suicide. Examination of these deviance types worldview demonstrates their uneven spread in different regions of the world. Over 460.000 willful murders committed in 2012, more than 2/3 occurred in Latin America and Africa. Thus, the level of violent deaths in these regions are two to three times higher than the worldwide average. It is significant that in the Asian countries comprising more than a half of the world population, there is less than 1/4 of the global violent murders, and the murder rate in Asia is over two times lower than the world average. Radically different picture emerges with regard to suicide: about 800,000 suicides committed in the world in 2012, and the Asian region accounts for about 2/3 of them. At the same time, regional indicators shows low oscillations about the world average (10-20% plus or minus). Comparative visual and correlation analysis of data on the level of homicides and suicides do not indicate any strong association between these characteristics. Also, contrary to popular belief, both indicators do not show statistically significant correlation with the level of national economic development. The annex contains two maps ("Homicide level in the world (2010-2012)"; "Suicide level in the world (2012)") and four tables.