England and Wales have one of the worst crime records in the industrialised world - even worse than America - according to the findings of an official survey published which compares the experience of victims across 17 countries.
The study, coordinated by the Dutch ministry of justice, shows England and Wales at the top of the world league with Australia as the countries where you are most likely to become a victim of crime. These countries face an annual rate of 58 crimes for every 100 inhabitants.
The findings, based on interviews with 35,000 people about their experience of crime across the 17 countries, were carried out last year. They are a blow to Labour's record and underline the challenge facing Tony Blair when he marks the launch of Labour's 10-year anti-crime plan next Monday by becoming the first serving prime minister to visit a prison.
The 2000 International Crime Victimisation survey shows that the falls in crime recorded since the mid-1990s in England and Wales are part of a general pattern of falling crime across the industrialised world but, unlike America, crime levels in England and Wales are still higher than they were at the end of the 1980s. When the survey was last carried out in 1996, England and Wales also topped the league table with 61 offences per 100 inhabitants.
According to the International Crime Victim Survey:2003/04.
Australia and then England and Wales had the highest burglary rates and rates for violent crimes such as robbery, assault and sexual assault .
People in England and Wales experienced more crime per head than any other country in the survey, 54.5 crimes per 100 inhabitants compared with an average of 35.2 per 100.
People in England and Wales face the second highest risk of being a victim of crime. Australia was the worst with 30% of its people victims of crime in 2000, followed by England and Wales with 26.4%.
England and Wales had the worst record for 'very serious' offences, scoring 18 for every hundred inhabitants, followed by Australia with 16.
People in England and Wales felt they were more unsafe when out alone after dark than people in most other countries surveyed, ranking 4th out of 17.
Contact crime, defined as robbery, sexual assault, and assault with force, was second highest in England and Wales (3.6% of those surveyed). The highest figure was for Australia, where it was 4.1%. The figure for the USA was 1.9% and for Japan, 0.4%.
according to International Crime Victim Survey:..england has a very high crime rate for population size,,..lol..allmost gives fuel to gun owners when they see that kinda crime
