ShawnMcCrea

Lets be honest here. The vast vast vast majority of the population in either country WILL NOT or ARE NOT affected AT ALL by crime and violence. Of course things do happen as they do happen in every corner of the world.

Now if you were debating going to the Congo in Africa or not than crime may be of some concern.

Realistically crime will not be an issue for anybody who does not want to be involved in crime. Unless your part of the .00001% of people who are innocent bystanderd's.

Canada's safe, England's safe. So ENJOY

MikeUK

you have no idea how hard a concept that is for so many on here to grasp

dbd33

Spot on.

drabux

Not quite so. British Crime Survey data show that between 25 and 45% of people in the UK are likely to be a victim of a crime in a twelve month period. By my calculations, that's a bit more than 0.00001%.

I do accept that violent crime is different, but it is still not insignificant at 4% i.e. 1 in 25 years one can expect to be a victim of violence. Obviously males and younger people are at a higher risk, and females and older people at less of a risk.
Alan

dbd33

He said violence, you've introduced littering. Further you're using a measuring of projected perception of impact of littering. Can you show that there's less distress caused by the potential for littering in Canada?

drabux

Difficult to make head or tale of what you're saying.

Topic title is about crime (not only violent crime) and I was responding to the posters comments about "crime and violence", as he put it i.e. violent and other crimes. Furthermore, I commented on violent crime by pointing out that it is not a rare as your 'spot on' comment assumes.

Alan

drabux

Apropos your comment on littering: do not belittle the crimes people are victims of. Violence, rape, burglary and theft are the major constituents of the crime figures. 'Littering' doesn't figure.

Alan

dbd33

The problem with crime comparisons between countries is that definitions of crimes vary and cultural propensities to report crimes vary. Murder is the easiest to compare because, at least, the presence of a body is consistent. Canada consistently has a higher murder rate than the UK so that's not what people want to see in this forum.

There are no directly comparable figures for "violent crime" nor for even those crimes which seem easily defined. Introducing a number for people "likely" to be victims of an unspecified crime in the future is no help at all. It says nothing about actual victims of actual violent crimes.

I think

"The vast vast vast majority of the population in either country WILL NOT or ARE NOT affected AT ALL by crime and violence."

is accurate.

dbd33

Then please define "violence" and "rape". I assume we accept that "theft" and "burglary" are not crimes that leave us quaking in our boots.

drabux

I just won five pounds because of you. Cheers. I bet a friend that the next post would move the goal posts to how crime is defined. If you don't like the numbers then deny they mean anything. Solopsists of the world unite!

Do you really think that the social scientists who compile international comparisons of crime (like the one I linked to) haven't thought about and haven't refined cross-national comparability and validity of measures? They are much more valid than your shoot-from-the-hip comments suggest.

If you really want to get into the topic of comparability of measures and then post about them in a knowledgeable way, you should read a bit of social scientific literature on this much-researched topic first. Why not start by reading the methodological discussion in the link I sent earlier examining international rates of crime? What's my occupation, you ask? I'm a quantitative social scientist

Back to the topic: crime in both countries is high relative to many other Western countries but the rates have dropped over the last few years. The absolute chance of being a victim of a violent crime is 1 in 25 in England & Wales, which is somewhat higher than in Canada.

Alan

ShawnMcCrea

For starters my quote about .00001% or whatever was for innocent bystanders. The majority of people who do not participate in any illegal activity are HIGHLY unlikely to be a victim of any sort of crime. Much less than the high statistic that you put out. If you do drugs, hang out with people who do, steal, hang out with gang members, etc. than there is a much much higher chance that you will be a victim of crime yourself. The every day good law abiding citizen is again HIGHLY unlikely to be a victim of crime.

And as for the joke links thats you sent you obviously havent travelled to far. New Zealand at #2 for the number of incidences is an abosulte joke and in no way reflects what its actually like to live in that country. These misinformed statistic link that you put up has countries like Mexico, India and South Africa far below NZ.

I challenge you to walk through Johannesburg, South Africa like I have in the evening and than walk through absolutely anywhere in New Zealand (like I have also done) in the middle of the night and than think to yourself how much those numbers really mean. I think you will be taking back a lot of your stats that are on a piece of paper and come back to reality.

dbd33

What do you say is the chance in Canada and, in each case, how do you define violent crime? Over what period?

(You cheated your friend, you had only to look at any of the many previous threads on crime to know that eventually the debate would collapse due to lack of comparable figures.)

dbd33

I didn't ask but since you claim expertise in statistical analysis let me ask if the passage of time matters. You've offered statistics for Canada and for London that are for different years, is this important or given the apples and gravy boats nature of the comparison is it trivial?

ShawnMcCrea

Good to see were on the same page for once

drabux

Mr/Ms Solipsist,

Did you have difficulty getting up this morning? Were you doubting how your watched defined 'time'? Did you believe it? Are you sure it's comparable to other people's time? And then when you made your breakfast, did you believe that the cornflakes is a food or did you shoot off an email to Kellogs doubting their definition of food?

Enough. If you doubt, find out: if you don't find out, I doubt you.

Alan