Freedom from crime, domestic tranquillity, safety from violence at home and on the street, public safety and the means to make cities safer are essential ingredients of sustainable development. To feel safe from crime is as important to a person as access to food, shelter, education and health.

Cities around the world are faced with increasing rates of interpersonal crime. In all countries, crimes against persons and property, such as robberies, burglaries or violence against women shatter the lives of individual victims, threaten feelings of community safety and accelerate community blight.

In industrialized countries, the recent rates per capita for interpersonal crimes such as robbery or burglary are often two to three times those of 30 years earlier. In some countries, they have risen at a rate of 5 percent per year in the last few decades, doubling in the last 14 years. In many countries, rapid economic and political transition has led to the doubling or tripling of crime rates in the past decade. In rich industrialized countries, social indicators show a worsening of crime, while life expectancy, school completion and disposable income have been improving.

While homicide is much less common than robbery or assault, it is possible to make some useful comparisons between countries using official statistics on this offence. The rates of homicide reported by the Fourth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems vary from less than 1 per 100,000 to more than 150 per 100,000 persons. Homicide rates tend to be higher in those countries that score lower on the human development index used in the UNDO Human Development Report. This index suggests that countries that have lower incomes, shorter life expectancies and lower educational attainment tend to have higher reported homicide rates.

At the city level, the rates of common crimes vary enormously. The Ministry of Justice in the Netherlands and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) have compared rates of victimization in different countries using common definitions of crimes. Cities in Africa and Latin America have the highest rates of contact crime, such as violence and robbery. Australia, New Zealand and North America are next, with rates higher than Asia and Western Europe. As a specific example, the rate of car theft is much higher in the affluent world, where the greater availability of cars increases the likelihood of their theft.