Is it safe to make international comparisons of crime data?

Criminal offences may be carefully defined in law, but they are also socially defined: whether people perceive a particular action or event as a crime, let alone whether they report it to anyone else (including the police, or a survey interviewer), can vary according their own knowledge, awareness or feelings about crime, which in turn may be influenced by the general public ‘mood’ or the preoccupations of politicians and the media. Every country seems to have its own media and politicians therefore they seek for them selves what is seen as right and wrong for their state and society whilst another state may feel that is perfectly acceptable. Until we all do not agree on the same law and order comparisons of any sort are complex.

However, Data is being collected on crime levels, police resources, performance measurement systems and policing style. Whilst variations in definitions of crimes and recording practices make absolute comparisons untenable, the information provided enables comparison at the basic level and the identification of trends.

In making any comparison it is necessary to be aware that such data will be the outcome of different legal and administrative systems and may also be derived from different statistical data collection process. It is seen impossible to measure the true extent of crime in any country, however if one does try to do so there are two main measures: The first is of the offence recorded by police. The second being, measures of crime from the results of victimisation surveys carried out on a sample of the public. However this still can be weak; although most countries collect information on the number of crimes recorded or reported by the police, absolute measures are misleading. This is due to the facts, some of which are mentioned above:

• Different legal and criminal justice system
• Rates of which crimes are reported to police and recorded by them!
• Differences in the points that crimes are measured-some measure it as soon as it is reported to the police others wait until a suspect is identified.
• Differences in the rules of measurement
• Differences of the list of offences that are included in the overall crime figures.
• Changed in data quality

Therefore, it goes to say, that until we have a similar law and order for each and every country comparisons can not be made at an international level, worldwide. We need a sae understanding in definitions of a certain crime-what that crime includes, the same laws, the same way of recording crime and a similar way of measurement. For example, many countries in the European Union have the same definition of homicide, they all recognise it as a crime, and therefore some sort of clear comparison can be possible. On the other hand information to provide international comparisons of sentencing is not regularly collected by the Home Office or any international bodies, due to the fact that many countries do not collect sentencing data or are unable to provide that sort of information.

The home office has been collecting and publishing data from other countries on the number of crimes recorded by the police and the prison population since 1993. They feel the number of countries covered and the comparability of the data received has improved since then through closer liaison with official boards. However they still can not guarantee the data as completely accurate or comparable as countries still differentiate in definitions.

I would conclude that it is often difficult to make international comparisons of crime data due to the differences in crime recording. While major offences like robbery, murder and housebreaking are likely to be reported, many petty crimes and offences such as theft may go unrecorded. Comparisons of specific major criminal offences would therefore present a more meaningful picture of the underlying crime situation.

Gordon Barclay, who has played an active part in improving international statistics, gave as a sub title to his talk ‘Are they safe?’ Interest in International comparative statistics is not new.

More than 100 years have gone since the above suggestion was made but the time when international comparisons are safe is still far beyond us. Crime data differs between countries, as do definitions of offence and the methods of collecting and counting crimes. So far efforts to standardise statistics has been put behind/into other areas.

As Gordon Barclay explained (in the lecture on 13th February) also carries out a survey of crime data worldwide, however it also fails to get complete and accurate information-common definitions are used and countries are expected to reconfigure their statistics as best as they can to fit the definition; Only to find that no country fits meets these definitions and there has been little quality control.

The most recent development has been the initiative of the European Union which has set up a new committee under the European Union Crime Prevention Network.  It is carrying out an audit of what data is available on crime in EU countries and is initially focussing on three crimes: street robbery, domestic burglary and car theft.

I feel that is this step is split up through the continents, like Asia and Africa and they take the same steps as carried out by the European Union Crime Prevention Network, we may then see a change in the way we look at crime data at an international level.