By David Bamber, Home Affairs Correspondent
(Filed: 01/12/2002)


England and Wales have the highest crime rate among the world's leading economies, according to a new report by the United Nations.

The survey, which is likely to prove embarrassing to David Blunkett, the Home Secretary. shows that people are more likely to be mugged, burgled, robbed or assaulted here than in America, Germany, Russia, South Africa or any other of the world's 20 largest nations. Only the Dominican Republic, New Zealand and Finland have higher crime rates than England and Wales.

According to the comparison of international crime statistics produced by the UN's Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, England and Wales had 9,766 crimes for every 100,000 people in the year 2000. America had 8,517, South Africa 7,997, Germany 7,621 and Russia 2,022.

During the period 1998-2000, Britain went from fifth to fourth worst in the world league table. An analysis of total recorded crime figures before 1998 also suggests that England and Wales have moved sharply up the league table since Labour came to power in 1997. Crimes fell from 5.5 million in 1993 to 4.5 million in 1997. By 1999, total crimes had risen again to 5.3 million.

Last night Oliver Letwin, the shadow home secretary, said: "This does rather blow a hole in David Blunkett's claim that New Labour has crime under control. It is a damning picture."

The UN reports also shows that England and Wales are the second-worst places in the world for assaults, with 851 people assaulted per 100,000, and seventh for burglaries and car theft, with 1,579 burglaries per 100,000 population.

Criminologists believe that a note of caution needs to be introduced into analysis of the data, because of the different ways in which UN member countries record crimes.

A Home Office spokesman said that officials had not yet seen the report and so could not comment.




Gun control in England is just one component of a much greater social tragedy. Over the years, England has effectively criminalized self-defense.

In effect, England has created an unalienable right to commit crimes. Any person interfering with a criminal in the pursuit of his protected craft can himself be charged with various crimes.

So, since criminals need only be concerned about the police - who are few, far between, and themselves constrained from using "excessive" force - England and Wales have become a criminals' paradise.

weird. i always thought new zealand was pretty good in the rankings. now i'm to learn it's not...

i suppose though, what the New Zealand finds as criminal behaviour might be completely different to say, what the US finds as criminal behaviour and therefore with varying ideas if crime, it's really hard to say.

The question of crime in England is still discussed at the moment... "The most hated woman in Britain", Myra Hindley died over a month ago in a prison, at the age of 60. With her lover, Ian Brady, she raped and killed four children. The case was made even more notorious by the tape-recording played to the trial of one of the victims pleading for life...

More info



One of the britain artists displayed in a London gallery a huge picture of Myra Hindley made of many little childs' hands pictures... There were of cours many protests and demonstrations. But the question is: why do people protest against it while they are watching with pleasure TV shows which reconstruct crimes comitted by her with all details at the same time?

i think in that case it's more of a issue of the children that were somewhat exploited in the making of the art.

would you like your child's hand to help for the image of such a person?

The argument "As more laws against gun control/whatever are being passed in England, more crimes are being committed" is only valid if you can verify that these new crimes would've been crimes at all before the passing of these news laws, catch my drift?

right, so under there people might be doing what they've always done, but only they're committing crimes now whereas before the new laws it was their right to do what they were doing.

Sixgun, we already know your gun control tirade; I don't see an argument about gun control in the article, but a theory that the party in power is the cause. What's the murder rate differences again? For some reason, I'd rather be robbed than murdered.

I do not like England very much.

I was offered a Security job there and refused it.

If anyone is in the Security business England is the place to be right now. Thier crime rate is amazingly high comparitive to any other high economic country.

Regardless of percentiles or anything else thier happy gun laws are not working.

I go everywhere armed and England does not welcome people such as I with open arms. Whereas I was quite able to walk around Turkey with my gun and not be bothered.
Of course I had to pull some strings to get the weapon there.

Still english crime in cities doesn't come close to the crime that they have in moscow or helsinki, birmingham only ranked 4th on the chart the rest were all european cities such as helsinki, moscow and another i cant remember.

i am not about banning guns, but i do think excessive weapons like citizens owning m-16s and grenade launchers shouldnt be allowed. Handguns and Rifles are all you really need for self defense and hunting. the rest of those fully automatic weapons are for massacres and bank robbery.

Billy's right. For once.

I'm still amazed its totally legal to by M-60s and other heavy duty weapons...

Sixgun.....Do I need to hit you with the comparative crime figures statistic

I can see Billy's point about self-defence and his argument is coherent, a criminal will run at an armed victim, when the victim gets the drop on him.

BUT

the figures show that in England where you're not a lot more likley to robbed 1.2 times U.S. per 1000 people figures, deaths and rapes are actually 10 and 8 times higher respectively.

ALthough I will concede a 4-5 times higher car crime rate and 2.8 times higher in-house burglaries. the overall question of self-defence is do I die with a gun in my hand and be robbed anyway or just hand over my wallet.

Guns can disuade the less well prepared mugger but when they are available for defence like in the U.S. they are also available for the crime in question. and they only work when the intended gets the drop on the assailalent. Most muggers don't carry big signs and neon warnings.

Sixgun saying the same thing over an over again without actually proving yourself and only quoting other people who don't justify their actions makes your argument worthless

What the above statistics don't mention is criminal Modus Operandi. Car crime is a huge problem in the U.K. as car crime is massively higher per 100k people. A massivley higher car crime which accounts for 20% of all crimes and rarely results in physical harm to the victim is a lot less of an issue of crime then the issue of having caps popped in your arse. With this considered and the fact that burgalries and car crimes, which I have conceded are higher, are on a large majority are convenience crimes. crimes where the criminal will avoid the victim. the chance for harm is substantially less.

You quote David bamber who is also wraites with a heavily conservative bias.... as do most broadsheets such as the times and ironically enough the independant. He is therefore criticising the government as it is not representative of his political views

Your arguement is flawed. Whan I preneted your with comparitive april 2002 figures from the U.S. government which are (possiblly) biased in favour of the current administartion the whole notion of saftey was higher in favour of the U.S.

the fact of the matter is in the U.K. a large number of crimes are oppertunistic crimes which do not involve any interaction between victim and assailant.

think about it when you relaise that the chances of me dieing in the U.S. are 10,000% higher the the U.K.

Neon

That made an insane amount of sense! Are crimes simply dealing with possession of a weapon being weeded out of these figures? What are those crimes treated as in the UK?

That does indeed make a lot of sense, afterall if everyone is doing it and it suddenly becomes a crime there are more crimes to catagorise and record.

This being said the actually facts on the number of firearms related incidents in the U.K. has went up a large amount since the 1997 act, however the HARM rate (ammount of people comming to harm form a crime catagory) has also risen with firearms and I think thats the point that sixgun is trying to put across but the truth is that the HARM rate has increaded only in line with a standardised devation increase present across the whole spectrum of crimes and is way out of preportion to the overall rise in car crime which has actually seen it's HARM rate see a minor percentile drop (0.8% which actually shows stablisation more then actually dropping crime)

The fact is although crime is maybe 5-7% higher in the U.K. my point still stands that the crime is oppertunistic and criminals would not be stopped by being shot at. They would simply be armed at the opertunity to excercise their rights as a citizen to bear arms to spread menace and terror.

I think that the right ot bear arms really only applies to long arms such as rifles and whatever...arms for protection and militia duties. The right to walk concealed into a resteraunt and kill six people before anyone else has the chance to react is not the intention. Weapons which CAN'T be concealed seems to me what it means. Hunters weapons which must have permits, must not be carred concealed and must not be carried in an offensive manner.. You have your huting rifles and anti-dictatorship advocates kept happy and you're not legally carrying a concealed handcannon to dupe some innocent victim

Handguns may be useful because they can be tucked into a pocket but it is this fact which makes them a 2 edged sword. they are concealable so that a criminal may be just as likely if not more likely to be packing then a citizen. You can't go around shooiting suspicious looking people on the off-chance they may have had a weapon, until they've got the drop on you, you don't know they've got a gun, one which is more then likely legally purchased.

Even in wild-west shootouts the guy with the gun already drawn won.

Neon

Shame about the USA's positioning in the education league tables.

May explain Sixgun though.

Anyone else worried about this....he was able to walk around armed, but had to pull strongs to get the wepon there?

Sounds like corruption to me. If people can wander aorund armed after bribery...a criminal act, then christ ONLY criminals carry guns.

Besides criminals are quite happy break the law to get a leg up.

Our gun laws are not perfect, but i've said before our death rate is a lot lower.

http://polyticks.com/polyticks/beararms/liars/world.htm

This site although possibly baised does seem to have accurate figures. The facts are simple. Turkey has a higer homocide rate then the U.K. where the overall gun-death rate is 1.35 per 100k people for both countries, out of those homicides the UK has 5.56 suicides to Turkey's

The overall homicide rate is over double in Turkey overall

in the U.K. crime is high. BUT is is far LESS harmful. Most crimes involved little to no victim/cirminal interaction.

Neon

From 1990 - 99 the USA had approximately nine times as many homicides as the UK.

Quite frankly, I'd rather be punched in the face a few times than shot to death.

(A little UN backup of those statistics)