Brisben

BRITAIN was officially named Europe’s most violent nation last night.
We also suffer more violence than people in the US or even SOUTH AFRICA, figures show.

A shocking 2,034 per 100,000 people suffer violent crime in the UK, compared to 466 in America and 1,609 in troublespot South Africa.

Britain’s damning figures far outstrip those of second-worst EU country — Austria, with 1,677 violent crimes per 100,000 people.

And the UK rate has increased by a shocking 77 per cent since 1998.

The numbers were released by the European Commission.

They also tell how Britain has the second highest OVERALL crime rate in the EU.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: “This is a real damning indictment of this Government’s comprehensive failure to tackle the deep-rooted social problems in our society, and the knock-on effect on crime and anti-social behaviour.”

Britain also has a higher homicide rate than most of our western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

But overall we came 13th worst in our rate for murders. Lithuania topped the list, followed by Estonia and Latvia.

The figures, recording crime in 2007, also show the UK has the fifth-highest robbery rate in the EU, and the fourth-highest burglary rate.


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We have TWICE as many burglaries as Germany or France.

The country with the lowest rate of violent crime was Romania, with just 32 violent crimes per 100,000 people.

But experts claim Romania as well as Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey — all at the bottom of the list — have different ways of recording crime.

Exported from http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...e-than-US.html

Cape Blue

And do you really believe that you would be safer in South Africa or the US? Really? I seem to remember you are several times more likely (per capita) to be shot in the US than the UK.

In reality most developed countries are much of a muchness when considering crime, with the US probably a little bit worse due to its poor social safety net and high gun ownership.

It is pretty difficult to measure crime across countries as there are a lot of definition differences of what fits in each description plus different attitudes to what gets reported at all. Murders might be one type of crime that can be benchmarked, what did the report say about them?

Brisben

I believe you can be safer in another country, the statistic that really needs looking at in correlation with crime figures is the amount of people per square mile.

I mean if you live in a low population area, then surely less likely to be affected by crime.

Manc

I feel WAAAY safer in the USA than I ever did in the UK.





And I lived in Detroit.

Brisben

There you go, I went to the USA mainly Chicago and felt very unsafe, until I had been there a month. then I felt safe.

Living in Australia I feel safer than I ever have, however probably influenced that Queensland only has a population of 4million and is about 8 times larger than the UK which has 60 million.

PS do you feel safer in the US cos you now carry a 45?

Catch

speaking to my South African neighbours about this,they fell about laughing at it.Probably right about Europe though,but so off the mark about SA

Catch

Just saw the comment came from "THE SUN" so it must be true

the troubadour

Strange, there are two threads exactly the same.I wrote similar with regards to South Africa.
With such a statement The Suns stats can not be taken with any degree of seriousness...not even for European Stats Russia is way ahead of UK ......
Perhaps the threads should be joined?

the troubadour

And Australia is quite high up the list for serious assault .....

Cape Blue

As I said before, it's not that easy to compare crime stats across countries but I guess that homicide is probably one of the crimes with the least variability in definition and reporting levels.
UK, West EU, Aus, Canada are around the same, the US is around 3 times higher per capita.
http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-...s-05012009.pdf

dunroving

But isn't most of that area uninhabited wilderness? I'm sure the crime rate out there is low, but who'd want to live there (in the outback)?

The whole "people per square mile" thing is spurious when most of the population is concentrated in a small proportion of the country.

pinoybill

The issue for me is that the continuing link between social deprivation and crime informing much of our decison making around punishment/causes of crime and the issue of blame/responsibility.The sort of nonsense is being peddled by all major political parties and unfortunately many Senior Police Officers and Policy Makers.

The UK is not a poor country by any stretch of the imagination.
If we have a lot more angry, stupid, criminally inclined people than the rest of Europe it is not a surprise but it is not because of poverty.

Prison may not work if you view it as a means to rehabilitate an individual but if you view it as a means of keeping the bad guys out of circulation its terrific. With the exception of Miami, I have felt safer in every other part of the world than parts of London.People here are inclined to resort to violence without hesitation.Try having a polite word with someone in the "hood" to moderate their behaviour.

smudge1

I wonder if Britain having the highest crime rate and Romania the lowest has anything to do with the fact that most of the Romanians are now in Britain....??

backagen

It really frustrates the hell out of me to constantly see in the media comments about how the government should, will, or is getting 'tough' on crime, sometimes accompanied by half-baked 'schemes' that some 'expert' thought might help, and yet the government (and I'm referring to the Australian government here almost as much as the British government) consistently fails to do the things that any ordinary person knows would cut crime very quickly and effectively.

1. There must be a well-organised and well-equipped, highly motivated police force that is not too bogged down in paperwork and red tape, and is not afraid to do anything for fear they will end up in more trouble than the criminals.

2. When caught, the offenders must face actual genuine serious consequences for their actions. This does not always have to mean imprisonment (which is ludicrously expensive and it's us who pay for it) but there should also be other options available to judges which are really effective in deterring and punishing offenders. I'd bring back some form of judicial corporal punishment for a lot of crimes. It's fast, inexpensive, totally enforcable, hurts the offender and makes the victim and the wider community feel that justice has been done.

Why can't governments see that the best solutions to many problems are often the simplest, cheapest, and most obvious ones?

Jules Europe

From a European perspective and from travelling around western Europe on a regular basis for work purposes etc. the UK does seem to have a higher crime rate than the rest of Europe. Stats in general are often incorrect anyway and are largely exaggerated for the benefit of those using them. Another perspective, is that many countries not just in europe, have certain crimes that are largely endemic to their societies. In the UK its largely knife crime fuelled by alcohol consumption, in north America gun crime fuelled by drug use, latin america kidnappings fuelled by the necessity to eat etc. Whereas the UK may have high crime, to compare it and say its worse than the USA and especially South Africa is just laughable, just one look on the South Africa forum would reveal this, as would reading about crimes and murders in say Detroit.

It can be argued that there is a correlation between high population and high crime in general, countries like South africa and Brazil have large populations and very high crime and in Europe the UK has the largest population after Germany so high crime is expected, it would be interesting to know the crime figures (again dubious stats) for Germany. Saying this certain rural areas in many countries also have high crime figures.