Canada and UK more violent than USA?

[Greenday]

I was on another forum where a gun thread started and one of the British members made fun of America for being more violent. He then used this website to backup his assertion: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cr...-total-crimes/

The problem is, he doesn't know what he's doing with these numbers or what they mean.

USA
Population: 313,808,000
Crimes: 11,877,218
Crime Rate: 3.8%

UK
Population: 62,262,000
Crimes: 6,523,706
Crime Rate: 10.5%

Canada
Population: 34,840,000
Crimes: 2,516,918
Crime Rate: 7.2%

So what's the deal? Is it a matter of so many people in such a small space? That'd explain the UK, but how does that explain Canada, which is bigger than the US but with such a smaller population?

According to this website: the UK has a higher assault rate, more car thefts per person, a much larger drug problem, more rape. I just, I'm really surprised. Any explanations?

[Zod]

Either I'm misreading this : or it's also saying that Japan has more crime then Mexico and South Africa.

Something's not right there.

( Also : misleading title : doesn't say "violent crime" : just "crime" )

[mikoyan29]

are these all crime statistics or just violent crime statistics? I bet if you started to weed out non-violent crimes, the numbers start to look about the same. Although, if the NRA is to believed, that might explain things....you're not going to mug someone you think may be packing heat...

[Zod]

Although, if the NRA is to believed, that might explain things....you're not going to mug someone you think may be packing heat...

Or buy your own gun and shoot your victim first. Which might be why the US have 9,369 "Murders wih firearms" and the UK had 14.

( usage of the word murder suggests they're not including self defence or accidents in this total )

are these all crime statistics or just violent crime statistics?

Doesn't say : I'd assume all crime. At the bottom it says :

"DEFINITION: Note: Crime statistics are often better indicators of prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime, than actual prevalence. " which is a point to bare in mind.

Also - different countries have differen legal systems : and so different criteria of what crime is. Places like Spain and the Netherlands don't arrest people for possession of cannabis which should reduce levels of total crime.

[Andara Bledin]

I've gone through that site before, and found that while it's useful to note general trends (eg. more guns in the US than UK, so more gun crime), it's not as useful for more nuanced information.

^-.-^

[Lace Neil Singer]

Not to mention that a statistic stating reported rapes doesn't indicate how many rapes take place, as in another country, perhaps rapes aren't reported as often.

[draco664]

Consider that the UK has things like ASBOs, which would never fly in the US. Thousands upon thousands of these bloody things are handed out to stop people doing perfectly legal, but annoying things.

Keep doing the thing, and voila! Instant crime with no law against it.

[Nyoibo]

Given it's based on reported crime rather than actual crime then I'm not sure how accurate it is.

[Nekojin]

It's worth noting that until relatively recently, Japan's rape figure was deceptively low, because most rape victims felt shame for having such a thing done to them, and wouldn't go to the police. Subway/train molestations were so common*, that it's now a popular theme for hentai.

Similar effects take place at all levels in all countries; there's no real way that I'm aware of to calculate actual crime rates. If someone is mugged and never reports it for whatever reason, it effectively doesn't count.

* And they were so common, because the perpetrators felt secure in doing it - most of the time, the women just suffered in silence, rather than say or do anything to highlight her "disgrace." Because they didn't get caught, the molesters got bolder and more numerous. Thankfully, the government has started taking such things seriously, and women are starting to speak out about it.

[HYHYBT]

Supposing the numbers to be comparable... while Canada *is* very large for its population, people mostly only live in along the southern edge, so it's not as different from Britain as it first appears.

[Gravekeeper]

That site is totally and hilariously farked up. Its showing Canada with a drug offence per capita rate 164 times higher than the US.

92,590 per 100,000 people are drug offenders in Canada.
183,419 per 100,000 people are drug offenders in the United Kingdom. Everyone in the UK is a double drug dealer.

Germany's the best, 250,969 per 100,000 people.

According to the comments:

"The webmasters used absolute counts rather than rate per 100,000 (e.g., Germany had an actual 2002 drug offence rate of 304 per 100,000 people; Canada, 295/100K; etc.)."

So a bunch of the site's crime statistics are basically off by magnitudes of tens if not hundreds of thousands because they loaded the wrong stats into the categories for Canada and European countries.

[Rapscallion]

Even if it had accurate figures, it wouldn't be able to take into account the effect of different laws and law styles.

Rapscallion