A word of caution
The following observations regarding crime, criminal justice and crime prevention around the world provide an overview of the present situation. The observations are, of course, generalizations. The body of the report provides more detailed information as well as information on the sources of the data. Because the quality of information varies considerably according to its source, caution should be exercised in interpreting the data provided in the report. The reader is strongly urged, therefore, to read carefully the Introduction to the report where the validity and reliability of the data are examined, and the pitfalls in making inferences, especially those of a comparative nature, are exposed. Making comparisons between two or more specific countries on particular items can be especially misleading, and should not be attempted without consulting the list of exceptions in Appendix 2.
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Sources of data
This report brings together, for the first time, enormous amounts of data that have been collected by the United Nations and ancillary bodies concerning crime, criminal justice and crime prevention over the past 25 years. The results of the five United Nations Surveys of Crime Trends and Operation of Criminal Justice Systems (UNCJS) form the backbone of this enterprise. The data are amply supplemented by other efforts: the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) conducted in some 60 countries across the globe and overseen by an international working group composed of the Ministry of Justice of the Netherlands, the Home Office of the United Kingdom and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute; United Nations International Study on the Regulation of Firearms; many resolutions and papers produced by various United Nations bodies during the course of their particular programmes; and special contributions by many scholars, researchers, policy makers and administrators with specific expertise and knowledge.
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Crime and its reporting
Crime is everywhere. Even though countries define crime differently in their criminal codes, no country is without crime.
An increasing number of countries now reports statistics concerning traditional crimes (murder, robbery, rape, theft, burglary, fraud and assault) to the United Nations surveys.
Crimes rates computed from surveys of victims are universally higher than those of official records.
While there are many known shortcomings of official crime statistics collected at the international level, the use of UNCJS data, for the purpose of making general inferences about groups of countries and trends over time, is reasonably reliable. Problems arise only when making comparisons between individual countries.
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Personal experience of crime and justice
There is remarkable agreement around the world concerning the comparative seriousness of crimes.
No matter what part of the world, over a five year period, two out of three inhabitants of big cities are victimized by crime at least once.
The risks of being victimized are highest in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.
Violence against women is most prevalent in Latin America, Africa, North America, Australia and New Zealand.
Where women are more emancipated, the rates of violence against women are lower. Less than one in three female victims of violence report their victimization to the police. Reporting is particularly low in the countries of Latin America.
Two-thirds of victims of serious crimes who had reported their victimization to the police indicated an unmet need for help. Levels of demand for help among victims were highest in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Globally, less than half of the victims who reported their cases to the police were satisfied with the response. Levels of satisfaction with the police are the lowest among victims in Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe and Africa.
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Crime recorded by the police
On average, crime reported to the police continued to rise in the 1990s, as it had in the 1980s. The most common crime reported was theft, followed by burglary. Violent crime (homicide, assaults, robbery) was a minority (around 10-15 percent) of all reported crime.
The rates were higher for industrial countries than non-industrial countries. Arab states generally reported very low rates for nearly all types of crime.
Cities around the world showed similar patterns for homicide and for robbery rates. However, high homicide rates were reported for several of the Latin American cities, New York and some northern European cities. (The UN Surveys requested data only nationally and in the largest city in the responding country.)
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The justice process
Civil law (including variations of it) is the most common basis of legal systems throughout the world. Customary justice systems are found in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Other types of legal systems are Islamic, common law and socialist. However, regardless of their legal systems, all countries have the three primary parts of the modern criminal justice system: police, courts and prisons.
The police are the front end of the criminal justice system. In some countries, however, the processing of suspects through the criminal justice system appears to be initiated by the prosecutor.
In all countries, most people who come in contact with the criminal justice system as suspects of crime are males. However, within these general findings, the distribution by age and gender of offenders involved with the criminal justice system varies among countries.
There were far fewer women and girls suspected of committing crimes in countries with low income than in those with high income.
In most countries about half the suspects or those prosecuted are found guilty and convicted of an offence.
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Punishment
For those convicted of serious crimes, prison is the universal sanction, applied more than any other punishment, and regardless of the type of legal system or level of development of a country.
There are wide variations in the prison rates of various countries, and these do not appear to be dependent on the amount of crime in a country.
There is no overall world trend towards increase in prison population. Some countries showed enormous increase in prison populations, and others showed decreases. More countries reported increases than decreases. Countries in transition especially reported increases in prison populations and admissions.
Parole is not widely used throughout the world. It is used mostly by developed Western countries. There have been large increases in use of parole by some east European countries.
A small number of countries report statistics that suggest prison populations exceeding their prison capacity. There is no economic or development feature that distinguishes this group of countries.
Developing countries tend to have more prisoners awaiting trial than do developed countries.
The movement towards restriction and abolition of the death penalty is not unidirectional. Abolitionist countries are predominantly in Europe (both west and east) and Latin America.
The fine is the most frequently used non-custodial sanction for those convicted of less serious crimes, regardless of level of development of the country.
Non-custodial sanctions are used less in the regions of Africa, Latin America and Asia. The informal justice systems of many developing countries apply non-custodial sanctions without their being recorded by the criminal justice system. However, in industrial countries, warnings, cautions, fines and other non-custodial programmes (such as restitution) are increasingly applied by police and prosecutors as a means of diverting such offenders away from the formal criminal justice system and finding of guilt.
Availability and use of non-custodial sanctions are policy choices, not directly tied to a country=s level of development.
As a general pattern, greater use of non-custodial sanctions does not lead to less use of prison, or vice-versa.
In developing countries and countries in transition the public displays a marked preference for prison as a punishment.
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Resources in criminal justice
In all countries, police make up the majority of criminal justice personnel.
The number of police per 100,000 population is increasing in the 1990s.
The number of police is unrelated to the amount of property crime, but may be related to the level of murder.
In all countries, men make up the majority of the criminal justice work force. However, there is a clear trend in recent years to employ more women in the criminal justice work force.
Industrial countries have a higher proportion of women in the criminal justice work force in all four occupations of police, prosecution, adjudication and corrections.
The ratio of adult convicted prisoners to adult prison beds varies hardly at all among countries. The ratio of prisoners to staff varies considerably. The developing country ratio of prisoners to staff is two to four times greater than that of developed (industrial) countries. Corrections staff per 100,000 population has risen 3.5 percent from 1990 to 1994.
Prisons are a resource that is universally employed. The growth of prisons applies to both industrial and non-industrial countries.
The range of expenditures on prisons and their operations is vast, from a low of $69 per prisoner to a high of $157,000 per prisoner.
The number of judges per 100,000 population is increasing in most countries. Common law countries have more judges per 100,000 population than do countries with other legal systems. Non governmental participation in criminal justice spans the globe, and is a way for countries to take advantage of their human and cultural resources.
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Firearms and their control
In general, countries that have higher firearm ownership rates also have higher firearm related death rates, including homicide rates, though there are some exceptions.
Firearms are commonly used in domestic disputes where fatalities occur. In contrast, firearms are hardly used in the commission of sexual assault.
There is broad international concern for the control and regulation of firearms. Countries differ widely in how they translate concern about firearm ownership into public policy and legislation.
Most countries prohibit the ownership of firearms for civilians with a criminal record or a record of domestic violence.
Most countries use some form of registry in order to trace lost or stolen firearms.
The rate of firearm ownership around the world varies from less than one percent of households owning a firearm to as many as 50 percent of all households.
The majority of countries regulate the manufacture of firearms and their components.
Countries in post-conflict situations often become the source of large numbers of illicit weapons, and become a centre of illegal smuggling of weapons to criminals in neighbouring countries.
The most common reason for owning a handgun is for protection against crime although there was considerable variation between countries and regions in this respect.
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Drugs and drug control
In any one year, slightly over one in a thousand persons illicitly use heroin or other opiates, and two in a thousand illicitly use cocaine. It should be noted, though, that only a small fraction of the world=s population uses drugs illicitly.
The number of types of illicit drugs has increased and their nature diversified in recent years.
Drug-related crimes have increased disproportionately in the last two decades when compared to other crime-related phenomena. World wide, types of crime committed by drug addicts are primarily acquisitive.
There are relatively few countries that keep centralized and internationally comparable records of illicit drug consumption.
The price of heroin and cocaine has fallen dramatically in recent years. This is primarily because, despite increased law enforcement interception efforts, the supply of drugs to consumers has greatly increased as a result of increased illicit production.
The economic incentives of the illicit drug trade serve to make organized trafficking extremely durable.
The available data suggest that the offenders in two thirds of the drug crime cases are given a non-custodial sentence.
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Crime prevention
Contrary to popular opinion, crime prevention does work. There are now many well documented cases of crime prevention programmes successfully reducing and/or preventing crime.
Two basic features that all crime prevention programmes must address are: social development - reducing the social factors that pre-dispose young persons to become persistent offenders - often focussing on potential offenders; and opportunity reduction - making crime more difficult, more risky, or less rewarding to potential offenders - often focussing on potential victims.
Success of crime prevention programmes depends on the mobilization of local communities, local leadership, expertise, and commitment by government to crime prevention as a top priority.
Preliminary studies suggest that prevention of crime is far more cost effective than paying for the processing of offenders through the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, in spite of the promised cost savings, government commitment to crime prevention as a top priority often appears to be more rhetoric than action.
Only a small number of governments have established specialized crime prevention secretariats.
However, some governments (e.g. the Netherlands) have adopted extensive social and economic programmes that are designed specifically to foster crime reduction and prevention. This is possible in countries with centralized systems of government, but difficult in countries without a centralized system.
Areas in which crime prevention has worked include reduction and prevention of burglary, assault, violence against women, theft and vandalism.
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Emerging issues: transnational crime
Transnational crime has emerged as a leading issue of 1990s. This general category includes illicit trafficking in arms, drugs, children, women, immigrants, body organs, cultural artifacts, flora and fauna, nuclear materials and automobiles; terrorism; bribery, corruption and fraud; and money laundering.
Transnational crimes are very complex crimes, composed of many smaller crimes. They are thus extremely difficult to count. No systematic method of accounting for these crimes yet exists at the international level. Few countries record these crimes separately in their official statistics. There is an urgent need for the development of reliable and uniform data collection.
Illicit markets exist because there is a demand for illicit goods and services, and criminal organizations willing to meet that demand.
Organized crime now operates on a vast, global level. For example, the theft of cars, which was once a traditional crime of concern only to a particular country, is now a transnational crime because cars are stolen with a view for sale on the international illicit market.
The direction of illicit marketing is usually from the developing world to the developed world where demand is highest. The exception is luxury cars which, for example, are stolen in Western Europe and shipped to Eastern Europe and the Russian Federation.
Very often illicit trade is mixed in with the licit trade, producing significant grey areas where it is difficult to identify illicit activities.
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Crime and justice policy
The overall impression from the information presented in this report is that crime and justice have a greater degree for independence from levels of economic development than has previously been considered. For example:
C All countries have prisons, and the prison rates are not generally related to either crime rates or levels of economic development.
C It is no longer clear that developing countries have higher violent crime rates than developed countries. In recent years, the levels have become pretty much the same.
C Victimization surveys have cast doubt on the assumption that developed countries have higher rates than developing countries (usually assumed to be so because developed countries have more movable property). It is now apparent that much theft in developing countries may not be reported to police.
These general findings are supported by the World Bank Report (1997) thesis that sustainable economic development cannot occur without the basic guarantees of security provided by the rule of law. An accountable criminal justice system is necessary in order to provide the building blocks for economic and human development. Without the guarantees of order and individual security provided by a criminal justice system that is accountable and open, development will stall, or take on distorted forms. While economic resources are no doubt helpful in establishing the actual day to day operations of criminal justice, they do not guarantee an adequate or effective system. An accountable criminal justice system does not require money: only government commitment. It is true that some expertise is needed in order to develop fully accountable and open criminal justice systems, but this expertise is available through many international channels, particularly through the United Nations, mostly for the asking.
The rule of law cannot be said to prevail in the international arena. The problem of crimes that transcend the borders of individual countries provides the greatest challenge to the international community. Transnational crime, as these crimes have become known, defies the rule of law by operating beyond and across the borders of countries. The result is that the ability of countries, at the international level, to coordinate their criminal justice systems is severely hampered by differing practices and laws. The establishment of a rule of law to govern transnational crime depends on the establishment of systematic data and information concerning these crimes, and cooperation of governments in producing these data. While this book is full of data for traditional crimes that occur within countries, few reliable statistics are available for transnational crimes. A systematic method of accounting for transnational crime at the international level is urgently needed.
The establishment of effective crime prevention strategies to prevent transnational crime from occurring is heavily dependent on countries working together to develop ways to (1) reduce demand for the illicit goods and services that are the bread and butter of organized criminal groups, and (2) to work with each other in combating the powerful international criminal organizations. Strong and binding agreements among countries are needed. While some small headway has been made concerning the international control of illegal drugs, in other areas of transnational crime, there has been little progress.