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Reality check: Is the crime rate higher in developed countries?
 Everyone wants to feel safe when they walk the streets and go to bed at night. Everyone wants to be safe from physical harm and also want their property to be safe too. But open the newspaper and there it is - news about violent crime and burglaries and assaults. It makes one feel insecure as the scenario portrays that crime is on the increase, especially in developed countries. But is this the reality? Here is a real time check on crime in the world:
Of all the violent crimes in the world, murders are the most likely to be reported with accuracy as murder data is least likely to be meddled with. Taking in to account the rate of murders in a particular country perhaps is a good measure of how violent a particular country is.
South Africa comes has the highest murder rate followed by Colombia, Thailand, and the US. Whereas, Oman, Luxembourg, Iceland, Morocco and Cyprus has the least violent crime, thus, making them the safe country to live in than the rest. )
If we consider statistics on the total number of crimes which are recorded in various countries as a ratio to their population, developed countries like the USA, UK, Germany, France and Russia are among the top five. On the other hand crimes in countries like Cyprus, Armenia, Oman, Nepal, Albania and many others is recorded at low levels. . It is likely that in these countries less victims report crime and less reported crimes are recorded by the police than the other developed or developing countries.
When it comes to burglaries and robberies, Australia and Spain has more crimes (per capita) than the USA and France. Whereas, England has been ranked seventh for burglaries - worse than Poland, Canada, South Africa, Slovenia, Czech Republic and Hungary -- and for robberies, the UK and the USA have been ranked eighth and eleven respectively.
For rapes, Australia and Canada are ranked third and fifth, worse than the likes of Norway, Poland, Sweden and Zimbabwe, while for car thefts, Australia, UK, Canada and the US are notoriously at top.
The above mentioned report force to think whether the crime rate is actually very high in the developed nation like Australia, the US, UK and Canada? But before arriving at a conclusion, one must consider the following factors: -
- There may be differences in the quality of recording and managing the data between countries. In developed countries recorded crimes are generally entered in a computerized database and channeled to a central point for analysis. In many less developed countries crime statistics are recorded on paper which can easily result in the loss of some of the statistics.
- The possibility of victims exposing the crime, and the police recording them, differs from country to country. Crime victims are less expected to report crime in a country with corrupt or ineffective police force than in a country where the police is supportive and dependable. The distances people have to travel to the nearest police station, and the availability of transport to get there, is another factor which can affect crime reporting rates.
Therefore, every country has different legal and criminal justice systems from the other countries in the world. Not only this, crime definitions differ from one country to the next. For example, a serious assault in one country could be recorded as an attempted murder somewhere else. Moreover, what represents a recordable crime in one country might not be against the law in another. So it is nearly impossible to compare the crime statistics of the various countries when every country implies different methods to compile crime statistics and many others maneuver their crime data? And appallingly some others under-report crimes. Thus, crime statistics are only one measurement of police performance.
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