Despite the devastating impact homicide and serious violence has on society as well as on the community, very little research has been conducted about the relationship between these two crimes over time. Despite this lack of research, scholars however still make unsupported assumptions regarding this relationship.This is problematic since these assumptions are used to underpin theoretical explanations of the decline in both homicide as well as other crime, without any reliable knowledge of the nature of this relationship. If an effective explanation of the decline in homicide is to be obtained, it is vital that the relationship between the trends in homicide and serious violence is examined further. This paper presents the initial steps towards gaining a deeper understanding for trends in homicide and violence over time in Scotland. The paper will be examining initial, descriptive findings and underlining the need for disaggregation of homicide, as well as violence. Research has demonstrated that homicide would be more adequately measured by a multidimensional construct, and that such disaggregation can reveal counter-trends in the data that were previously hidden. If homicide and violence are operationalized as multidimensional constructs, differences and similarities between these two types of crimes could be revealed that were previously obscured. Not only would this provide more detailed information regarding both homicide and violence, but this would also greatly enhance the knowledge regarding how these two crimes are related over time. While some types of homicide might have decreased in line with the aggregate trend of homicide in Scotland, some types of homicide or serious violence might have remained stable or even decreased. In order to examine this relationship further and to get a deeper understanding of homicide, both homicide and violence therefore need to be disaggregated into subtypes before being compared over time.