NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/soc/culture/british/19551

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-28 | 6.5 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,soc.culture.usa,talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: US and European crime rates
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 27 Jan 93 16:24:04 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Jack Campin)
Followup-To: soc.culture.british,soc.culture.usa
Organization: COMANDOS Project, Glesga Yoonie
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Some new data on this.  From the Guardian, 26/1/93:

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Offences involving cars highest in England and Wales

*New Zealand top of world crime figures*

Duncan Campbell, Crime Correspondent


New Zealand tops the the crime in the industrialised world with high levels
of violence and burglary, according to a survey due to be published next
month.  England and Wales top the league for car crime.

Assaults using force are most common in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and
the United States, the figures suggest.  Czechoslovakia, New Zealand,
Australia and the US top the list for burglary.

Sexual assault was reported with [most? - jack] frequency in eastern
Europe, with Czechoslovakia and Poland having high rates.  Women also
reported high levels of sexual incidents in Australia, Canada, West Germany
and the United States.  Those reporting least sexual assaults were Japan,
Switzerland, England and Wales.

Japan would appear to have the lowest incidence of assaults and burglary,
with Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland having the lowest car crime
figures.  The Netherlands, Sweden and Japan had the highest levels of
bicycle theft.

The survey, co-ordinated by the Dutch justice ministry in the Hague, was
compiled from interviews in 1991 and 1988 with about 2,000 people in 20
industrialised countries.  More than 50,000 people were interviewed by
telephone.

The figures represent the percentage of those who considered themselves to
be victims of the types of crime featured.

In general, this is felt to be a more accurate way of comparing crime rates
than police statistics, as each country has a different mthod of recording
crime.  The research method also logs crimes that people have not reported
to the police.

Researchers realize that there is a limit to how much can be gleaned from
the figures as different nations have different definitions of what
constitutes assault.

The Home Office, which is collating the final figures before publication in
this country, will issue the survey next month.

Yesterday one of the report's authors, Pat Mayhew, said: "To some extent a
country's crime rate is explained by its degree of urbanisation, and by its
age structure."  The more urbanised a country, the higher its crime rate,
she said.

Other findings in the survey showed that the percentage of the popualtion
which had been the victim of a crime in the previous 12 months was highest
in New Zealand, with Netherlands, Canada, Australia, the United States,
Poland, England and Wales below them.

Those with the least experience of crime were the Japanese followed by the
Northern Irish, Swiss and Scots.

England and Wales lead the field in car crime, experienced by 2.8 per cent
of the population in the previous 12 months.

Poland and Czechoslovakia suffered most from pick-pocketing.  Robbery was
relatively uncommon but the likeliest victims were in Spain, Poland, the US
and Italy.

Australians and New Zealanders were the most cautious about going out in
the evenings.  The Swiss and the Japanese had least fears.

In terms of punishment, support for jailing burglars was highest in
Czechoslovakia, the US and the UK.  The Germans, Swiss and Belgians
favoured community service.

The survey concludes differing government policies on crime have little
obvious effect.

_Criminal Victimization in the Industrialised World: Netherlands Justice
 Ministry_.

Table listing sexual assaults and car thefts (my interpretation of a bar
chart):

        Sexual assault    Car theft
NZ        1.5        2.7
Netherlands    0.9        0.4
Canada        1.8        1.1
Australia    1.9        2.7
US        1.5        2.3
Poland        2.0        0.6
England/Wales    0.3        2.9
Czechoslovakia    2.4        0.7
Italy        1.0        2.7
W. Germany    1.7        0.4
Sweden        0.8        1.7
France        0.6        2.4
Scotland    0.8        0.8
Switzerland    -        -
N.Ireland    0.4        1.6
Japan        -        0.7

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There was a survey late last year by Richard Kinsey of the Department of
Criminology at Edinburgh University, using a similar methodology, that got
roughly similar comparisons between Scotland and England.  Obviously you'd
need to see the whole of this Dutch survey to see exactly what to make of
it: e.g. to what extent did they compensate for class bias induced by phone
ownership?  (if they didn't, the result is a survey of crime against the
middle class, which might be *very* different from a whole-population study).

Some British agency (I forget what) does a National Crime Survey every year
using a similar random-sample-of-the-public approach -  presumably this was
not incorporated into this because what it chooses to measure is specific to
the British system.

Followups are set to soc.culture.usa and soc.culture.british only: I added
talk.politics.guns because, while there isn't a talk.politics.crime group,
this subject seems to be of general interest there and t.p.g is about the
nearest there is to it.  Specifically: it seems from these figures that
neither national legislative policy on guns nor actual rates of gun
ownership have any more correlation with crime rates than general government
crime policies do.  Which is what I would have expected but contradicts what
both the let's-arm-to-the-teeth-against-the-perps and the guns-create-a-
climate-of-lawlessness positions popular in the US would have us believe.

[ Please don't retain the crossposting: topic drift is inevitable. I'll read
  followups in all three groups. ]

--
--  Jack Campin    room G092, Computing Science Department, Glasgow University,
17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, Scotland   TEL: [phone] x6854 (work)
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