Summary
THINGS IN COMMON |
THINGS DIVERSE |
Crime is universal. There is no country without crime. |
Reported crime rates for every offence varied greatly by country. Arab states generally reported very low rates for nearly all types of crime. |
On average, crime continued to rise in the 1990s, as it had in the 1980s. |
Many countries showed a fall in crime in the 1990s. |
The most common crime reported was theft, followed by burglary. |
Theft rates were higher for industrial countries than non-industrial countries. |
Violent crime (homicide, assaults, robbery) was a minority (around 10-15%) of all reported crime. |
Some countries reported a much higher proportion of violent crime than others. |
Most cities show similar patterns for homicide and for robbery rates. |
High homicide rates were reported for several Latin American cities, New York and Northern European cities. |
All countries reporting crime statistics to the United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operation of Criminal Justice Systems have been able to adapt their definitions of traditional crime categories to fit the United Nations definitions. |
There is no one accepted methodology for collecting crime figures recorded by the police. Figures for a particular country depend on that country's state of development, the role of the police and the extent to which police use technology. |
In all countries police recorded crime figures are acknowledged to give an incomplete picture of crime experienced by the population. |
A growing number of countries is developing new methods of measuring unrecorded crime, using victim surveys of various types, self-report surveys and complex measures of organized and transnational crimes. |
All countries found it very difficult to define and measure complex crime such as organized crime. |
Some country groupings, (e.g. the European Union) have made considerable progress collecting data on organized crime. |