Comparative Crime rates

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OK, here's an article from my sister city Calgary:
I'll spoiler it for you:

Spoiler

British policemen are a breed apart
They've been holding the line against scumbags in the U.K. -- without guns

By IAN ROBINSON

Last Updated: 17th May 2009, 1:30am
What are these? The British are coming, the British are coming!

And unlike Paul Revere, I'm glad to see these guys.

For years, when it came to criminals rendering large swaths of our fine city unliveable, we've been shocked into immobility like maiden aunts watching their first porno flick -- and not one of those nice "couples" movies with a costume budget and a story.

I'm talking about something twisted, with German-speaking midgets and whips and shackles.

While we stood immobilized, a former Calgary police chief put advertisements on the sides of buses telling members of gangs that gangs were bad and they could die. (While most Calgarians thought, "How 'bout we put more cops on the street?")

Given the number of funerals these guys attend and the gallons of perfectly good Remy Martin they've poured into freshly turned ground to commemorate the recently slain, I'm pretty sure most of them realize they don't have to pay attention to the RRSP ads -- let alone the ones on the sides of buses.

We ran anti-crime poster contests for children because as we all know, giving little kids a handful of Crayolas and an assignment keeps them from growing up to rob banks and sell crack. (Most Calgarians: "Um, how 'bout we take the money we're spending on crayons and put more cops on the street?")

We discussed whether surveillance cameras in high-crime areas might violate the rights of the crack-addled hobo dropping his drawers to do his personal business in a public place. (Most Calgarians: "Um, sure, cameras are great but how 'bout we put more cops on the street?

And by the way, can somebody smack that hobo so he quits crapping in the parking lot?")

And then we fretted: If we crack down on crime, won't they move somewhere else? (Most Calgarians: That's why we give cops cars and sturdy shoes ... so they can follow the bad guys around. How 'bout we put more cops on the street?")

Now ... finally ... 62 constables in four teams are gonna hit high-crime areas downtown, immediately in the wake of a giant buy-and-bust operation last week that took 200 scumbag crack dealers off the streets.

As Deputy Chief Al Redford told the Sun: "We intend to make the downtown area unpleasant for those who are making it unpleasant for others."

Well hallafreakinlujah!

And if you thought the big buy-and-bust operation was cool, of the 62 constables heading downtown, 29 of them are experienced cops from Great Britain.

Nothing wrong with our homegrown coppers, but British cops are a breed apart.

They have been holding the line against scumbags back in the old country -- without guns.

They're usually armed only with some pepper spray and a baton. Often while wearing one of those silly hats that you see on cops in Sherlock Holmes movies.

Unlike the image carefully crafted to keep the tourist dollars coming, the U.K. is basically a yob-infested cesspool with a rate of rape, burglary and auto theft 60% higher than that of the U.S. -- in a country with more cops per capita than the U.S.

Plus, the U.K. is a nation in which its citizens are three times more likely to be the victim of a violent assault than an American.

So if you can survive as a cop in the U.K., keeping the peace as best you can with a whistle and a stick, in an environment so violent that it makes Calgary crooks look like Mormon Sunday school teachers, then I think they'll do real well here.

I devoutly hope they and their Canadian colleagues will do what needs to be done.

The plan unveiled by the police service calls for these reinforcements to be highly visible, perform reassurance policing and develop relationships with the community.

Just having a couple of highly visible cops on downtown street corners will be reassuring.

And hitting miscreants with a stick ... that's a kind of relationship, isn't it?

IAN.ROBINSON@SUNMEDIA.CA

The part that gets me is this:

Is this true? Or did those facts come out of his buttinski?

 

Paging Barmy...

 

I have no reason to doubt those numbers. The Thatcher years created a whole lot of unemployed poor people and they and their children tend to do a lot of bad stuff.

 

Basically, I would say yes, although obviously its a lot more complex than that.

The current state is that violent crime is on the rise, and a lot of it is perpetrated by youths between 12 and 21 years of age. Yes, 12. Children as young as that have murdered people before. They form gangs and carry out "happy slapping" attacks, where they basically beat people to death. Gangsterism and violent crime is a cancer in this country.

That being said, I do get the feeling that things are exaggerated by the media somewhat. Dont get me wrong, the events I've described above definitely happen. What I'm not sure about is exactly how often they happen.

The basic cause, I feel, is that people have become too soft, and this is exacerbated by police brutality in some cases, and in others the police have no support from the public, partly because of the brutality and heavy handedness they exhibit sometimes. In short, its a vicious circle.

joacqin is right I believe - when the welfare state was introduced, it created poverty rather than ending it. People who had formerly had to work for a living (oh the horror!) could now depend upon the state. Poverty bred gangsterism. The police are not allowed to do pretty much anything, so they have little power against the real criminals, so they seem to take their angst out an innocent people like photographers (yes, taking photos in the wrong places can get you arrested).

 

As for the article, I'd say it exaggerates to an extent. Still, it is not all that far off. It is a thing you notice when you're in the UK, that there are areas in large cities where you lock the car when you drive through, and where you don't stop - not because someone told you to but because you get the idea all by yourself. British cops that I saw usually wear 'stab vests', probably not without reason. If something characterises them it would be aplomb.

If you look at the houses in Britain, the buildings standards are poorer and the buildings are smaller than in Germany. Water pipes and drain pipes are on the outside of buildings; it is predictable they will freeze in the winter. Isolation in walls and windows? You're kidding. Phone lines? I built better with field expedient improvisations when I was in the army. Generally in the UK, compared to Germany, wages are lower and hours are longer. At the same time prices in stores and shops are considerably higher because of the VAT there. Add to that, in places like London, outrageous rents. Generally, in my view the living standard in the UK is lower than in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Probably that makes for a tough breed. Brits I met at work in Germany were about as hard working as they were hard drinking; those who worked for us in the UK, out of (over)sight (my old employer was run by fools), tended to be roguish to fraudulent, but then, they were salesmen, and we were the Germans.

 

@Ragusa

Hmmm, I wouldnt characterize the UK as all that bad. I mean, most houses at least have double glazing (ie window isolation), I dont know if the walls are isolated too. I think perhaps the reason they build them so close together is to preserve heat as well as to save space. Our broadband service is pretty good, I dont know about phones I dont use landlines. I mean, we pay something like £10 a month for about 8 megabit. I think its supposed to go as high as 16 but in practice it doesnt. Your VAT rate is generally higher than ours - 19% compared to our 15% - but I see a lot of stuff in Germany is tax exempt, and other stuff is taxed at only 7%.

As for wages and working hours.... I get paid a lot, and my working hours are good, I dont know about the whole country though. At least, I get paid a lot relative to my age, but then I am in the IT industry.

I do agree about London though, rent is absolutely crazily outrageous, and the standard of living is generally low. Thats why, as a South African living in London for the past few years, I've decided to return home at the end of the year. The rent that I pay for a room in a small house with no garden (scarcely a house) would be enough to rent a very nice flat for 2-3 people probably with a garden in Cape Town, one of the more expensive areas of South Africa.

 

Proteus, you kinda took the exact opposite meaning from my words than what I meant. My point was that Thatcher's dismantling of the welfare state and the unions led to great numbers of disillusionised people without any kind of hope for the future.

 

While I am sure the British cops are well-trained and dedicated, isn't it a little strange that the author of the article would praise how good they are and in the same breath state that their country has a serious crime problem? I know I am oversimplifying the matter, but if crime rate is so high this means the cops are not doing their job effectively.

Anyway, is there some kind of database for crime rates online?

 

Unfortunately, the cops are only half of the solution to crime. The other half is the law. If either half isn't there, the system fails.

 

NOG's got it there -- you can have the best police force in the world, but if the criminals they catch are merely released by bleeding heart judges 24 hours later, then it's a moot point. Also, the frequency of criminal acts does not indicate that the police are not doing their jobs -- it merely indicates a high frequency of such occurrences.

 

I have heard that said often enough; I would say sometimes it is true and sometimes it is an excuse used to cover up for actual problems the police has - often a bit of both. However, then we should have to prove British penal law is excessively soft on criminals, or the judges too compassionate. At any rate, I was not saying anything about the actual skill of the British cops - just pointing out an inconsistency in the article.

The thing is, for such a discussion we need to actually have reliable statistics on crime rates. It is possible that the author is exaggerating in order to push for a political point and there is no significant difference between the crime rates in the UK and Canada.

 

There was a British judge who said that he felt a life sentence for murder was unfair, because then the murderer would only get out when he was old. Yeah...

 

Seriously? That is... well... not exactly bright. On the other hand, there may be one who thinks the death penalty is fitting punishment for cruelty to animals. That does not mean the majority of their colleagues share their sentiment. By the way, what punishment does British law include for manslaughter and murder?

 

The idea behind not handing out life sentences per se is the one of rehabilitation. That an offender must be given a chance to change, thus locking him up for life deprives him of the change to prove that he changed. That in mind, I think that the judge misspoke or was deliberately quoted out of the legal context (for the intended effect, as demonstrated above).

That reasoning reflects the law in Germany as well. There is a good 'Menschenbild' behind it. That it is not always realistic is another matter. The law has to be idealistic at times. The way out of this is to give repeat offenders of serious crimes a prognosis of whether they will revert to their old ways. If the prognosis is negative, they can be kept in custody beyond their actual sentences. It shifts the problem away from the judge to the prison system and psychologists (it is still subject to judicial review). Heaven help the psychologist who gets his prognosis wrong and when the offender comimits another serious crime - everybody is out for his or her head then. Hindsight is always 20/20.

While that is true, it can be simply so that the system, while effective in principle, is being over tasked. It takes time to deal procedurally with a criminal case in a proper way. Which is lamentable but probably inevitable. Handing out legal sanctions swiftly is prone to error. Which, in combination with the presumtion of innocence doesn't go together all that well.

As for 'bleeding heart' judges releasing criminals out of kind heartedness, that is something I have yet to encounter. I think it's largely a myth. The same applies to juries aquitting criminals. Usually, criminals are being released or aquitted because of rules of evidence and procedure. You mention 'criminals' which in this context usually means people who have been arrested. Probably not without reason, but the question whether they are criminals stands at the end of the process the arrest starts. I doubt that you want to abandon the presumtion of innocence. You really did want to say 'convicts', didn't you?

The more general problems with the miscreants in the original article - like drug pushers, crack and meth users, hobos and so forth - brings you into the realm of undesirables and prevention. Yes, you can pick them up for disturbing the public peace and so forth. But considering the severity of the offence, for how long? In Germany there was a time we had laws that allowed to arrest 'habitual criminals' and 'anti social persons' and send them to prison camps for 'rehabilitation' (i.e. hard labour, strict discipline and severe corporal punishment). The point was to scare the hell out of everybody. While that was indeed a solution, it was a bad and arbitrary one, and highly illegal by today's standards. Europe's liberalism is a reflex born out of opposition to excess.

 

I don't know why anyone would consider high crime rates in the U.K. surprising. It has all the classic symptoms.

1. Out of control welfare. When you convince the citizenry that the government will take care of you people lose their self-esteem. People become more adept at working the system then actually working. When people don't work, they are far more likely to get into trouble. Think idle hands and the devil.

2. Out of control immigration. When Mohammad became the #1 baby name in the U.K. that should have set off some major alarms. Immigration is great if the immigrants have a desire to assimilate into their new country's culture. When they decide to try to supplant the native culture it is destined to lead to problems.

3. Self Defense- When you take away a person's ability to defend themselves you create a ready supply of helpless victims for those with ill intent. First they took away the citizen's ability to own firearms, and if I remember correctly, they are trying to get rid of knives.

4. Over regulation- When you create laws that prevent everything, then everyone becomes a criminal. I was reading a website that had anecdotes about the "bin police" who make sure everyone's trash is properly disposed of. I wish I remember where it was, but if wasn't so sad it would have been hilarious.

 

Well back then even DDR had a significantly higher BNP per capita than the UK which is quite astonishing really. I do remember a Brittish born actor who now lives in Finland saying in an interview that he has a champagne bottle in the closet just waiting for the day Thatcher dies. Her destruction/restructuring of the brittish heavy industry had a very serious impact on his childhood community and the family.

 

murder per capita can be found here http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita. you will find USA on a 24th place and the UK at 46th. a bit different list you can see that the murder rate in USA is generally higher than in Europe and that the the murder rate in the south states are higher than the north states http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homicide_rate

and assault is higher in the US than UK http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ass_percap-crime-assaults-per-capita

on the other hand burglery per capita seams to be higher in UK than USA http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_bur_percap-crime-burglaries-per-capita

compared overall the UK has only slightly more crimes reported than the US http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita does Guns and knives sure helps America keeping the crime down

 

TGS, each of those four points can be argued in reverse. There are plenty of people who believe that not providing welfare for the poorest class increases crime, not protecting immigrants' rights can lead to increased by violence among and against them, the right of self-defense can be abused and used to excuse any behavior, and lack of sufficient regulation leads to either huge loopholes or inadequate power to deal with serious crime. Those claims, just like those that you posted, make some sense at face value - this is why they need to be tested. As LKD colorfully put it, we need to know where the "facts" they cite are coming from.

Equester, these statistics are interesting. Do you know if the UN office that released the data has newer surveys? I found some from 2004, but the US is not included in all data sets. This one might be interesting, though it only covers intentional homicides: http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/IHS-rates-05012009.pdf

 

interesting numbers Shaman, especially considering the US on that list is over twice as high as UK and near five times higher than many of the western European countries. I wonder why the US' intentional homicides are so much higher, as I wouldn't blame it all on the access to weapons.

 

Equester, you have to take into account the way that each country calculates homicides.