I wonder if the statistical basis is there for like-with-like comparisons across countries (i.e., rates per 100 of the population, adjusted for socio-economic and age distribution profiles in different sorts of urban and rural neighbourhoods). Absolute figures don't prove very much.

And crimes come and go: I think the Home Office found that, over the longer term, when unemployment goes up, so do property crimes, but when unemployment goes down and there's more money in more people's pockets, crimes of violence - largely alcohol-fuelled - go up).

It's a question of what you're used to, I think. We adjust to what we know and therefore mostly grow up learning how to avoid trouble, and so crime is mostly what happens to someone else. But when we travel to another environment, we either aren't so aware of what might go wrong and might blunder unawares into risky situations that locals wouldn't, or find the environment so unfamiliar that everything seems frightening.

There aren't completely comparable statistics available as each country keeps it's own records and defines crime in it's own way (for example TWOCing in Britain is recorded as a motor offence - but as a property crime elsewhere).

There are statistics available which compare area by area. What they show is the single biggest predictor of crime in an area is the number of males aged 14-25.

Sorry, but all that "America has violent crime because it is legal to own a gun" is a bunch of nonsense. Canada has similar laws as the U.S. and there is very little gun-related crime.

What is the difference? Canada doesn't have the same social problems that the U.S. does.

Social problems breed crime, not guns.

Christine

Handmaiden, Just the opposite!
Since the U.S. removed restrictive gun laws it is enjoying the lowest crime rate in memory.