NCJ Number
241541
Date Published
2005
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This chapter compares changes in crime rates over time in different countries and assesses the plausibility of some explanations of these changes.
Abstract
The chapter compares the crime levels of four countries, England and Wales (referred to in this chapter as "England"), the United States, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. These countries were selected because the separate chapters on each of these countries most closely followed the template of the original chapter on England in the Bureau of Justice Statistics report (Farrington, Langan, and Tonry, 2004), both in documenting changes in crime and punishment over time and in investigating correlations between crime rates and other possibly influencing factors. This chapter analyzes victim survey crime rates for residential burglary, vehicle theft, robbery, and assault, because the authors believe that these offense data are more accurate than police-recorded crime rates; however police-recorded crime rates were used for rape and homicide. Section I of the chapter compares changes in crime rates over time in the four countries. Section II assesses the plausibility of some explanations for these changes by investigating correlations between crime rates and sociodemographic and criminal justice factors in the four countries. Section III summarizes the main conclusions and offers recommendation regarding future research that is required to advance knowledge about changes in crime rates over time in different countries. Correlations are reported between crime rates and possible causal factors across time and in different countries. Apart from the negative correlation between crime rates and the probability of an offender being convicted, few of these results proved to be replicable across different countries. The chapter recommends research on more national indicators of possible causal factors in different countries and to conduct multivariate, multi-country analyses. 9 tables and 10 references