It may come as a surprise to readers that rape was the most reported crime by countries in the Fifth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Criminal Justice Systems since it is widely believed that rape is one of the most under-reported crimes. That is, victims tend, more than for any other crime, not to report their victimization to the police. But we have found that countries are more likely to report statistics on rape to the United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Criminal Justice Systems than any other crime.
Of those countries that returned the questionnaire (91) the number of rapes recorded by the police was provided more often than were statistics for any of the other major crimes of homicide, assault, robbery, theft or drug crimes. This finding holds for every stage of the criminal justice system: police records, arrests, prosecutions and convictions. In fact, the proportion of countries providing statistics for rape convictions (60 percent) was quite a bit higher than for other crimes: 56 percent for robbery down to a low of 41 percent for homicide. While these statistics do not in any way indicate differential processing of offenders for rape, they do suggest that, at least at the international level of crime reporting , there is a much stronger sensitivity to reporting rape than other crimes. Perhaps an even more surprising finding is that the crime of homicide (completed intentional homicide in this case) was reported by countries less often than any other crime and at every level of the criminal justice process. It is likely that this result is a product of the very specific definitions prevailing in some countries of intentional homicide which may make it difficult for them to fit intentional homicide into the standard UN definition used in the survey.