[irridgita]

Violent crime in the US:

More than 75 percent of victims know their offender. (U.S. Department of Justice, National Crime Victimization Survey — September 2004)

But is violent crime more random in other countries?

Availability of guns is a huge issue, people say it doesn't matter but it does. It got a lot harder to get guns IN NYC, but people can still get one within 2hr drive of the city so it's a moot point. In England it's a different story where guns are not a civil rights issue. Ghetto areas in NYC also got alot smaller and safer too so that's where the crime decreased also.

[noingenah]

Crime stats drop in NYC is not just Manhattan its the whole city all five boros that decreased

Yes and the figures for all five boroughs are questionable.

[Qncvqpgfg]

Violent crime in the US:

More than 75 percent of victims know their offender. (U.S. Department of Justice, National Crime Victimization Survey — September 2004)

But is violent crime more random in other countries?

Most violent crime in the UK is also carried out by someone known to the
victim - and the NCVS is a survey like the British Crime Survey.

[Arbinknit]

Yes and the figures for all five boroughs are questionable.

I grew up in Brooklyn and when I go to areas I use to go that were crime ridden, it amazes me the changes. The figures may not be 100% but the drop in crime since the mid 90's is large

[UFJon]

I grew up in Brooklyn and when I go to areas I use to go that were crime ridden, it amazes me the changes. The figures may not be 100% but the drop in crime since the mid 90's is large

I am sure it is, NY was in the midst of a crack cocaine epidemic in the 80's and 90's.

However this diesn't mean that the stats are correct, Brooklyn may be safer, but the Police and Bloombergs figures don't add up.

[Htb48JBf]

http://www.world-productions.com/out..._justice_6.htm

Last year, 100 times more children were murdered by strangers on TV than in real life.

In the same year, there weren't any real serial murders. But God knows how many were portrayed on BBC and ITV.

There were 886 real homicides, compared to an estimated 1800 pretend ones on terrestial TV.

If you exclude the 800 "domestic" homicides, i.e. killings committed by a member of your extended family or a close friend, there are 20 imaginary murders to every real one.

30% of tabloid news coverage is devoted to crime. 60% of that coverage is devoted to non-domestic murder which represent less than 0.1% of reported incidents.

A study in Birmingham found that 53% of crime coverage concerned the 6% of known crimes involving offences against a person.

In an NOP poll, the British public estimated that 47% of reported crimes involved violence. The real figure is 6%.

Another poll for the BBC found that on average the public believed that one in four people would fall victim to violent crime in the next 12 months. The true figure is one in a hundred.

If you are a child under the age of 10, you are 57 times more likely to be killed by a member of your own family than to be murdered by a stranger.

More than half of all violent crimes take place in the home with wives, girlfriends and children being the most likely victims.

Outside the family, 80% of violent crimes are committed by men between the ages of 16-24, but they also account for the vast bulk of the victims.

In one sense, the figures for violent crime aren't a reflection of a violent society, they're a record of domestic and family breakdown in the UK.

So our perception of the likelihood and nature of violent crime is wildly at odds with reality.

In 2001/2, there were 812,954 recorded crimes of violence:
650,154 crimes against the person
121,375 robbery with violence (muggings etc.)
41,425 sexual offences

Of the 650,154 crimes against the person, 32,350 are counted as serious offences.

The other 617,804 less serious offences are largely made up of common assault, other wounding (i.e. not life threatening), possession of weapons, harassment and assault on a constable.

You could call them "Saturday night" crimes: a punch-up outside a pub or a club or domestic violence usually fuelled by drink or drugs.

You could also call them crimes of the poor. They're not trivial, but by and large they're not pre-meditated either. So they're a long way from the public perception of violent crimes where organised gangs of thugs patrol the streets targetting perfect strangers.



They also probably involve a deal of double-counting. Let's say you go to the pub, come home drunk and start knocking your wife about. A neighbour tries to complain, so you pop him one and when the police arrive there's a struggle.

When it comes to court, you're charged with wounding, actual bodily harm, common assault and assaulting a police officer. So it's one incident, but four offences for the record.

If your neighbour wore glasses, they might throw in a few property offences like criminal damage as well.

We also don't suffer violence equally. 45% of all violent crimes are reported 14% of victims. In other words, it's not spread evenly throughout out society. The same people tend to be assaulted again and again.

Turning to the more serious offences, the first thing to note is they represent less than 0.6% of all recorded crimes and divide up as follows:

Homicide (inc. manslaughter and infanticide): 886
Attempted murder 858
Conspiracy to murder 13,648
death by driving 407
Serious Wounding 16,537

In other words, if there were such a thing as an average bobby, he'd only come across a serious wounding once every seven and a half years.

Equally, although "conspiracy to murder" is a serious charge, it may not have involved much or any actual violence.

Doing the Police in Voices:

I've yet to meet a policeman who doesn't love The Bill. But it's not the portrayal of coppers they prize, it's the picture of crime.

The Bill is full of professional criminals planning bank jobs, Mr Bigs supplying cocaine behind the barrels of Uzis and Kosovan gangsters muscling in on the Yardies patch. There are lots of murders and serious woundings and there are few juveniles or drug addicts.

In other words, it's a complete fantasy and the police know it.

But the police love violent crime. Without violent crime, the police are in big trouble. Without violent crime, the public might want to know what's happening to their £7.8 billion pa. Without violent crime, we might want to give the job to someone else.

Violent crime is what makes us want to put more bobbies on the beat or more criminals inside. Violent crime makes us happy to build more prisons and abolish the jury system.

When it comes to violence, we don't care about cost, we just want the job done.

And violent crime appears to be the one job the police are good at. The clear-up rates for property crime may look pretty sick, but when it comes to crimes of violence, the clear-up rate is an impressive 68%, rising to 92% for serious offences.

So we forgive the police their failings in other areas. When it counts, they do the job and they do it well.

[selayeffethy]

Violent Crime Fact Sheet UK.

http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ES...cePageId=18134

The murder rate for England and Wales is showing its first sustained fall since the 1960s, according to the annual crime figures published today. A total of 765 people were killed, including the 52 victims of the July 7 bombings, in the 12 months to April 2006.

This is the third successive year that homicides in England and Wales fell and are down from a peak of 1,047 in 2002 which included the murders committed by Harold Shipman.

One of the most dramatic falls in the last 12 months is in the number of fatal shootings which have fallen from 77 to 46 largely as a result of targeted police operations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/arti...824692,00.html

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/colum...466343,00.html

Police Recorded Crime - England and Wales

Serious Violent Crimes - There were a total of 21,624 offences of serious
violence recorded by the police in 2005/06 in England and Wales (pop - 53 million).

This represents a decrease of 769 offences from the previous year.

[mr.videomen]

Given that there were 80,000 Police Officers in England and Wales in the 1960's and there are now 140,000 Police Officers in England and Wales, plus a further 17,000 in Scotland, I would say the numbers have significantly increased. On top of this there are 2,700 British Transport Police, 12,000 Special Constables and a planned 25,000 PCSO's.

So where are all the real Police Officers? Every public survey I've read produces the same complaint, the public asking "where have all the Police gone, why aren't they patrolling our streets reclaiming them from the yobs, rapists, burglars & muggers?"
Police Officers on the beat are as rare now as hen's teeth - they're simply nowhere to be seen! Yes you can tell me about increased numbers but they're not where it counts, on the frontline preventing & detecting crime.

When one woman stood outside Downing Street quietly reading out the names of the British war dead in Iraq, 7 Police vans and 20 cops turned up to arrest her!
When the the poor innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes was shot at Stockwell tube station, the Police were there in force to shoot him 8 times, 7 times in the head!
So when there's a bit of action to be carried out they're there but when Joe Public wants the Police they're nowhere to be seen.

As I've already said we don't want cardboard cut-out PSCO's as a substitute for real Police officers, we're being cheated, we want what we pay for & expect, real professional Police officers who are visible and who can hopefully regain the trust of the public.

[soryalomop]

Then I feel much safer in NYC. Murders commited in the city are more likely to be drug related or family abuse. None of which is a situation that I am in. So I am sure glad that I am more likely to keep my life and my wallet in NYC.

This is going to be an unfortunate example, but TLOZ Links5 probably makes that response void.

Not quite sure why this thread was started, a bit of a random one this one, much like Private Birdseyes'!

Police Officers on the beat are as rare now as hen's teeth - they're simply nowhere to be seen! Yes you can tell me about increased numbers but they're not where it counts, on the frontline preventing & detecting crime.

That is down to three reasons:
- A drop in crime
- The increased focus on combating 'hidden' crimes, eg computer fraud, people smuggling, etc...
- People living in cul-de-sacs, tower blocks and villages that would make such visibility expensive

That is where CCTV comes in, it allows a policeman to be in more places than one and co-ordinate movements to aid those in help and apprehend those who are in trouble.

As for the Mr de Menezes case, that was unfortunate, the combination of poor intelligence (ironically better intelligence from more invasive procedures would be something you'd be against), and a day after 5 attempted suicide bombings failed with the suspects on the run, is going to put a bit of pressure on the police. A suicide bomber on the run who wants to maim and kill as many people as possible, is a tad bit more important than a pick pocketer.

PSCO's provide the police with a presence on the street for less money, meaning the police have more people on the street to ensure that people can feel reassured. If you take away the PSCO's, you'd actually be cutting back the street presence.

[Mearticbaibre]

Jaeger some crime statics for you:

GB vs Italy:

GB higher murder rate (per capita)

GB higher total crimes (per capita)

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cr...mes-per-capita

And hey... I wouldn't worry so much about dying in Naples... after all the Italian life expectancy is the world's 8th highest. The GB? At a sorry 21st place.

So maybe trip to Naples might do ya some good...

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/he...th-years-males

And if you SHOULD get sick, just know that you'll at least be getting good health care...

http://www.who.int/whr/2000/media_ce.../en/index.html

Ciao!