Developmental prevention
4.3 Outcome: recorded crime rates
Comparability of crime rates is a much discussed topic, as explained in the introduction. Eurostat cautions against comparing crime levels based
on absolute figures, as they may be affected by many distorting factors, including:
– different legal and criminal justice systems;
– differences in recording and reporting rates;
– differences in the point at which crime is measured;
– differences in the way multiple offences are counted;
– differences in the types of offences included in the overall crime figures.
Victim surveys of reported crime offer a more reliable alternative for cross-country comparisons than police recorded crime. Victim surveys are less biased by the large dark figure (hidden crime) in official police records. However, they may still suffer from cultural differences regarding the interpretation or tolerance of certain offences, for instance unwelcome sexual advances. This is likely to affect the probability that citizens report such offences in a survey, but will certainly affect the probability that they report them to the police. According to the 2014 Dutch victim survey, two-thirds of the number of offences experienced were not reported to the police. According to the British Crime Survey, about half the committed crimes are recorded by the police, but the dark figure has clearly become smaller (except for theft from motor vehicles and burglary) (Jansson 2007).
Victim surveys are organized to circumvent the problem of the dark figure in recorded crimes, although they shed no light on crimes without imme-diate and individual victims (for example crimes against organisations, homicide and drug offences).
The International Crime Victim Survey (icvs), the most far-reaching pro-gramme of standardized victim surveys, was initiated in 1987 and funded by the Dutch Ministry of Justice. This project ended in 2005. But there was a widely felt need to gather information on crime and safety by means of victim surveys. The European Commission decided to continue this pro-gramme of victim surveys, to be implemented by Eurostat. However, the proposal for designing a standardised survey in all Member States (Van Dijk et al. 2010), was rejected by the European Parliament in September 2012. An important argument was that results from national surveys were already available for many Member States and that the added value of this project was doubtful (Van Dijk 2013). By contrast, The European Sourcebook (2014) states that these national surveys cannot be compared because of serious methodological differences. Furthermore, six of the selected countries in this report (Austria, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Malta and Slovak Republic) have never conducted a national victimisation survey, and only nine coun-tries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom conduct one periodically.
Hence, the only international data source available to us are police records.
Fortunately, data collection by Eurostat has improved and definitions are better maintained. Nonetheless, caution remains imperative when
interpreting the results (see Section 4.1). Comparative analyses can focus on three aspects: distributive comparisons of types of crime and offenders, comparisons of crime levels between countries and trend comparisons within and between countries (European Sourcebook 2014). Owing to methodological problems, comparisons of crime levels between countries in particular should be handled prudently.
We distinguish between more and less serious crime (Figure 4.1). More serious crime comprises violence, robbery, burglary, motor vehicle theft and drugs offences. In the Netherlands, these offences made up around 25%
of total recorded crime in 2012. Less serious crimes include other theft (no motor vehicles, no violence used), which constituted about 43% of total crime, destruction, vandalism and arson (12%), traffic offences (11%) and oth-er crimes (9%). The mean share of more soth-erious crimes in all selected coun-tries amounts to 25%, but values range from 8% (Germany) to 80% (Cyprus).
Figure 4.2 shows the number of recorded serious crimes per 1,000 inhabit-ants in 2012. This figure illustrates the need for caution when interpreting differences in crime rates. In Sweden, for example, the number of violent crimes is based on the number of persons involved in a crime. Moreover, Swedish crimes are classified the moment they are first reported and retain this classification even if they turn out to be unsubstantiated.
Substantial country differences emerge in levels and types of crime. As indi-cated, these differences will be partially real and partially artificial/method-ological. To obtain a first impression of the extent to which these differences may be real, we compare them with the national victim surveys reported in the European Sourcebook 2014. Unfortunately, only a small sample of countries participate in victim surveys, but if we select countries with the highest levels of reported violence (Finland, Belgium and Sweden) and coun-tries with the lowest levels (Ireland, Poland and Bulgaria), we can conclude that differences in recorded violence do not diverge much from differences in reported violence, although differences in levels are undoubtedly biased by methodological issues. With regard to domestic burglary, the similari-ties between recorded (police) and reported (victim) figures are less clear.
According to national victim surveys, for example, inhabitants of Belgium and Croatia report high levels of burglary and inhabitants of Finland and Sweden report low levels. As a general finding, levels of recorded violence are high in parts of Oceania, Northern America, as well as in Western and Northern Europe, and low in some Central and Eastern European countries.
Robbery tends to be more common in Southern Europe, domestic burglary in Oceania and Northern America, and motor vehicle theft in all types of countries, except Central and Eastern Europe. The last observation is the most salient: the least crime seems to occur in Central and Eastern European countries, if we base this conclusion merely on recorded crime rates.
More interesting, and more reliable, are trends in crime rates. Figures 4.3a- 4.3d report changes in crime rates between 1995 and 2012 for four types of
Region Country
0 20 40 60 80 100
Western Europe
Ireland United Kingdom Luxembourg Netherlands Belgium France Austria Switzerland
Northern
Europe Norway
Denmark Finland
Southern
Europe Cyprus
Greece Italy Portugal Spain Malta Central and
Eastern Europe
Croatia Estonia Bulgaria Latvia Lithuania Czech Republic Hungary Slovak Republic Poland Romania Slovenia
Northern America
Canada United States
Korea Eastern
Asia
serious crime 2012 other crime 2012 Sweden
Germany
Oceania Australia
New Zealand
Japan
Figure 4.1 Share of serious crime in total recorded crime, 2012 (%)
Source: Eurostat and UNODC.
Region Country
0 10 20 30
Western
Europe Belgium
United Kingdom Luxembourg Netherlands Ireland Switzerland France Austria Germany Northern
Europe
Sweden Denmark Finland Norway Southern
Europe
Greece Italy Spain Portugal Cyprus Malta Central and
Eastern Europe
Estonia Hungary Croatia Czech Republic Bulgaria Slovenia Latvia Lithuania Poland Slovak Republic Romania
Oceania New Zealand
Australia
Eastern
Asia Korea
Japan Northern
America
Canada United States
violence robbery burglary motor vehicle theft drugs Figure 4.2 Recorded serious crime rates (per 1,000 of total population), 2012 (not weighted)
Source: Eurostat and UNODC.
offences. Violence rose significantly between 1995 and 2012, but not in all countries. In twelve of the 35 countries violence declined, predominantly in Central and Eastern European countries but also in the usa. Croatia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom show the biggest increase, all occur-ring between 1995 and 2005.
Trends in robbery are partly increasing and partly decreasing. Trends are favourable in Estonia, Latvia and, again, the usa. In some countries with very low levels of robbery in 1995 (Cyprus, Croatia and Austria) levels of crime rose sharply, but were still below the mean level in 2012. In general, there appears to be a convergence towards mean levels of robbery.
The trends in burglary are more favourable, falling on average from 4.8 per 1,000 inhabitants in 1995 to 3.1 in 2012. No general country group pattern can be detected, and we therefore conclude that this general trend applies to all types of countries. Decreasing levels of burglary have been attributed to increasing security measures taken by businesses and citizens to pro-tect (and insure) their property and valuables by means of better locks and alarm systems.
Most spectacular is the diminishing incidence of motor vehicle theft.
Countries with high levels of theft in 1995, in particular, succeeded in lowering the rates of crime. However, some countries with low levels of theft in 1995 – Greece and Cyprus – saw rising figures. A major reason for decreasing motor vehicle theft is the security measures taken by car man-ufacturers, such as better alarm systems, door locks and engine immobi-lisers. Unfortunately, organised crime is regaining ground, so constant innovation is needed to stay ahead of the game.
Different types of crime can be added together in one figure by weighting them according to the severity of the offence. We use a weighting scheme derived from Statistics Canada (2009) to produce statistics about the sever-ity of crime. The specific weight assigned to any given type of offence con-sists of two parts: the incarceration rate (proportion of people convicted), which is multiplied by the average length of the prison sentence.1
1
The weights assigned to offences in this study are divided by the mean value of less serious crime (which has the default value of 1). The mean weight of
‘assault’ is calculated by using the Dutch distribution of types of assault. The resulting weights are: homicide:
175; assault: 4; robbery:
15; burglary: 5; motor vehicle theft: 2; drugs abuse: 2; other (less serious) crime: 1.
0 3 6 9 12 15
Figure 4.3 Recorded crime rates in 1995 and 2012, per 100,000 of total population
a. Violence
2012
Figure 4.3 Recorded crime rates in 1995 and 2012, per 100,000 of total population (continued)
2012
In general, crime stabilised between 1995 and 2012 (Table 4.2). Exceptions are Bulgaria, Estonia and the United Kingdom, which experienced a strong downward trend in crime severity. By contrast, Slovenia, Portugal and Sweden saw a substantial increase in crime severity between 1995 and 2012.
Of all 29 countries with information about recorded (weighted) crime rates, 11 countries had less crime in 2012 compared to 1995, ten countries had about the same crime levels and in eight countries crime increased. In gen-eral, we observe a shift in crime rates from burglary and motor vehicle theft to violence. Violence carries a higher weight than burglary and motor vehicle theft in terms of severity, so that more violence offsets the sharp decrease in other types of crime. The changes in the crime rates of the United Kingdom are noteworthy, in this regard, with the highest increase in violence but also large reductions in burglary and motor vehicle theft as well as a modest fall in robbery, which apparently are large enough to outweigh the increase in violence. Sweden, on the other hand, saw a considerable drop in motor vehicle theft, but also a large increase in violence, dominating the country’s negative trend.
Overall (weighted) recorded crime rates tend to be high in Northern and Western European countries and low in Central and Eastern European coun-tries. Within these regions, Norway and Ireland score relatively favourably, due to moderate to low occurrences of all crime types. Estonia and Hungary score relatively unfavourably, largely due to a high level of violence in both cases.
For the sake of comparability across policy sectors in this report, an outcome index for social safety was constructed. We cannot stress enough that the resulting ranking of countries should not be interpreted as country perfor-mance in any way, and especially not in the area of social safety, with only one available outcome indicator which, as explained, suffers from compa-rability issues. The outcome indicator used is the weighted recorded serious crime rate (see also Table 4.2), which consists of a weighted average of vio-lence, robbery, burglary, motor vehicle theft and drugs offences. When crime is low, the outcome index is high. The index-scores are listed in Figure 4.4.
We only have data for the regions Western Europe, Northern Europe, South-ern Europe and Central and EastSouth-ern Europe. The outcome index also points to Central and Eastern Europe as the region with the lowest (weighted) recorded serious crime rate on average in 2012, especially in Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia. The highest serious crime rates were record-ed in Northern and Western European countries, especially in Belgium, Denmark and the United Kingdom. Germany is a noteworthy positive excep-tion. The countries of Southern Europe are located in the middle.
Region Country 1995 2000 2005 2010 2012 2012 2012 vs 1995
0 50 100 150 200 250 Western
Europe Belgium 210 +1 –21 +8 +7 205
United Kingdom 194 +7 +6 –51 –19 137
Netherlands 144 +2 +5 –14 –4 133
Luxembourg 131 –32 +1 +9 +23 132
France 118 +7 0 –8 –9 108
Table 4.2 Level of total recorded crime in 1995 (weighted) and changes in 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2012 a
a Compared to five years earlier (compared to two years earlier in the case of 2012). Source: Eurostat (except non-European countries).
For reading instructions see page 49
Region Country
-3 -1.5 0 1.5
Western
Europe Germany
Austria Switzerland Ireland France Luxembourg Netherlands United Kingdom Belgium Northern
Europe
Norway Finland Sweden Denmark Southern
Europe
Cyprus Malta Portugal Italy Spain Greece Central and
Eastern Europe
Romania Slovak Republic Slovenia Poland Czech Republic Croatia Bulgaria Latvia Lithuania Hungary Estonia
Oceania Australia
New Zealand
Eastern
Asia Japan
Korea Northern
America
Canada United States
Figure 4.4 Social safety outcome index, 2012 (in index scores based on weighted recorded serious crime)
Notes: The outcome index is constructed as follows. First, we identify the 24 countries with available outcome data for all sectors: AT, BE, DE, FR, GB, IE, LU, NL, DK, FI, SE, ES, IT, PT, BG, CZ, EE, HU, LT, LV, PL, RO, SI, and SK. We calculate the 2012 mean and standard deviation of serious crime for this reference group of 24.
We then compute standardised 2012 scores for this outcome indicator by transforming positive into negative scores (so that less crime means a higher index score), subtracting the mean and dividing by the standard deviation. Source: Eurostat and UNODC (2012) (SCP treatment).