Crime in Your Neighborhood - A Comparison of England/Wales, the Netherlands, and the United States

• NCJ Number: 103176
• Author(s): R Block
• Date Published: 1986
• Length: 13 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Loyola University of Chicago
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Research was performed with cooperation of Ministry of Justice of the Netherlands, British Home Office, National Institute of Justice. Funded by a Fulbright Fellowship and a grant from Loyola University of Chicago.

Annotation

A comparison of crime levels in England and Wales, the Netherlands, and the United States used data from victimization surveys and found that no single country had the highest rates for all categories of crime.

Abstract

Data sources were the 1984 victimization survey in the Netherlands, the British Crime Survey of 1981, and the United States National Crime Survey conducted in February 1985. The analysis focused on crimes in the respondent's home neighborhood and excluded respondents under age 16. The analysis used weighting and other adjustments to allow for the methodological differences in the surveys. The United States had a lower overall risk of robbery, threat, and assault than the other countries, but its rate of violence with injury was higher. The surveys did not include murder, which has much higher rates in the United States than in the other countries. The United States had higher rates of residential burglaries and lower rates of theft from automobiles. In all the countries, residents of big cities were much more likely to be victimized in their own neighborhoods than were residents of less populated areas. In England and the Netherlands, citizens' assessments of their neighborhood crime problems related to their own victimization experience, the experiences of their acquaintances, and the degree of urbanization. Figure and data tables.