Crime rate

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This graph shows the rate of non-fatal firearm-related crime in the United States from 1993 to 2003.

Crime rate is a measure of the rate of occurrence of crimes committed in a given area and time. Most commonly, crime rate is given as the number of crimes committed among a given number of persons. Often, the type of crime is exactly specified. Thus, a crime rate might be given as the number of murders (or rapes, thefts, etc.) per 100,000 persons per year within a city.

Crime rate is a useful statistic for many purposes, such as evaluating the effectiveness of crime prevention measures or the relative safety of a particular city or neighborhood. Crime rate statistics are commonly used by politicians to advocate for or against a policy designed to deal with crime. As with any set of statistics, crime rate statistics can be presented in a misleading manner to fit the presenter's agenda.

[edit] World crime rate data

Having a resident population of just over 500, and millions of tourists every year, Vatican City has the highest crime rate per capita of any nation on earth, with penal offences at 133.6% in 2002. [1]

Of the nations with crime rate statistics listed at NationMaster.com, Dominica leads the world in total crime per capita, with 113.822 per 1,000 people. New Zealand is second with 105.881 per 1,000 people, and Finland is third, with 101.526 per 1,000 people. Yemen has the lowest, with 1.16109 per 1,000 people. The data comes from the Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, covering the period 1998 - 2000 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention). They also note that, "Crime statistics are often better indicators of prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime, than actual prevalence." 1 Finland is listed as the least corrupt country, while New Zealand comes second.