UK's crime rate much higher than US's
From the UK Daily Mail, England's violent crime rate is about 80 percent higher than the US's.
Britain has a higher crime rate than any other rich nation except Australia, according to a survey yesterday.The chances of having your car stolen are greater in England and Wales than anywhere else in the developed world, it said.
The international crime report was published as Tony Blair prepared to unveil plans to tackle persistent offenders.
The Prime Minister - who will next week become the first serving premier to visit a British prison when he launches his law-and-order package - said the crackdown would target the 100,000 worst offenders who are responsible for the bulk of crimes.
He is to announce a £700million programme - described by senior government sources as 'very radical' - in a bid to win back the initiative in the law and order debate in the runup to the general election expected in May.
According to the figures released yesterday, 3.6 per cent of the population of England and Wales were victims of violent crime in 1999 - second only to Australia, where the figure was 4.1 per cent.
Scotland had a slightly lower rate of violence, at 3.4 per cent.
In the U.S., only 2 per cent of the population suffered an assault or robbery. . . .
posted by John Lott at 12:29 AM
6 Comments:
Article must be from 1999-2001 period.
How old is that news article?
In the US I believe that the areas in which gun crime (gun murders) are extremely high (and slanting all the gun statistics)are the drug war areas in our inner cities. Criminals killing criminals. Often (Chicago, D.C.)in areas covered by strict gun laws already. Why don't we hear more about this? Is it too "politically incorrect"?
This seems to me to be a fiction created through statistics. I confess I'm not an expert on crime or crime statistics, but I have never, ever heard of using a crime victimization rate, or whatever it is called, to express a crime rate. The crime rate is the crime rate! - the number of crimes per 100,000 or 1,000,000 of population. It is incorrect to say in the headline that the crime rate is 80% higher, and then in the body of the message say that its based on what percent of the population are victims.
Dear Douglas2 and John Hardin:
I had already posted the most up-to-date data and links here (http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2012/12/so-did-piers-morgan-and-christiane.html). I thought that the article was interesting because it was at least after the period when England and Wales' handgun ban was in effect.
Dear Blaine:
Thanks. You are exactly right about that on all counts.
Dear John Visser:
Thanks, but there is nothing unusual about the term "crime victimization rate." It is simply the rate that people are victims of crime. It is a very common used number. Saying that you have so many crime victims per 100,000 people or saying that there is a rate of victimization -- the two are the same.
Thanks for your reply, John. I failed to make my point. What I was trying to communicate is two things: first, that the common presumption about crime rates is that it is crimes per population, regardless of the number of victims; and second, that a rate that refers to crime victims per population reduces the rate, since after the person is victimized once, subsequent crimes against this same victim are not counted.
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