[craig1234564]

London alone in the UK has had 20 teenagers stabbed to death so far this year,
how does this compare with say christchurch? or aukland? how many murders are there per year?

[James 1077]

There are a few posts on this but basically you can't compare the figures as in the UK if someone commits, say, 4 crimes (ie burglary, rape, murder and stealing a car) it will only be recorded as the worst one - whereas in NZ it will be recorded as 4 crimes.

This means that you are left with working on people's perception of crime. Coming to Auckland from London I can say that I have never felt any fear of crime in the slightest. We often forget to lock our back door and generally leave it unlocked all night anyway. The crime that makes the news here is very "low-level" normally and wouldn't even have made the local news in the UK; and the police seem far more approachable and visible than in the UK. Furthermore they actually appear to solve crimes over here, rather than just handing out crime numbers for your insurance claim!

Obviously this is just my perception and others may feel different. It probably helps that we live in Devonport which has the lowest crime rate in NZ!

[benandclare]

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

This site can make for scary reading or not :exit

[dharder]

There are a few posts on this but basically you can't compare the figures as in the UK if someone commits, say, 4 crimes (ie burglary, rape, murder and stealing a car) it will only be recorded as the worst one - whereas in NZ it will be recorded as 4 crimes.

Do we actually know this for a fact? And surely all statistics are collected in different ways, even within a country, I'd be vary to make general comments on how crime statistics are collected.

I think crime statistics are notoriously difficult to get, and especially since they are almost always collected for policital purposes of one kind or another, I believe they always have to be taken with a grain of salt.

But I agree, James, that it comes down to perception. I have always found the police in London very approachable and visible. I have reported acts of minor vandalism, and the police was there straight away, whenever we have seen police officers, they have always made a point of being super nice to the children and answer all their questions. The NZ police seems to be similar.

Where perception for me differs is that I feel less safe in my own house in NZ. That is in part because the houses are spaced apart further apart, I don't know the neighbours, people all have alarms, and my partner's parents' house (same street) has been burgled numerous times until they got an alarm. And this is not a bad area.

But again, eye of the beholder and all that :)

Daniela

[benandclare]

This was brought up in this thread a while back

http://www.emigratenz.org/forum/showthread.php?t=12639&page=7

Quote:
Originally Posted by ENZ
The difficulty with crime statistics is the different ways crimes are counted in different countries. New Zealand complained to the OECD a few years ago when an OECD report showed NZ had the worst youth crime in the world - all because of the way crimes are counted in New Zealand.

In most countries if a criminal assaulted someone, then kidnapped them, stole their car, raped and murdered them, the crime would be counted as one crime - a murder.

In New Zealand the crime would count as one assault, one kidnap, one car theft, one rape and one murder. In other words the same crime can look much worse when it’s fed into New Zealand’s crime statistics than it would in many overseas statistics.

The New Zealand Ministry of Justice compiled figures in 2000 comparing violent crime in New Zealand with other countries. To make it a truly like-for-like comparison, the Ministry used the crime-counting methods of the other countries. The figures that emerge from this approach show that New Zealand and Australia are the English speaking countries with the lowest violent crime rates.


Using American Crime counting methods (per 100,000 people)

New Zealand murder rate = 1.7
America murder rate = 5.5

New Zealand total violent crime = 133
America total violent crime = 506


Using Australian Crime counting methods (per 100,000 people)

New Zealand murder rate = 1.8
Australia murder rate = 1.8

New Zealand total violent crime = 1036
Australia total violent crime = 942


Using British Crime counting methods (per 100,000 people)


New Zealand total violent crime = 1204
British total violent crime = 1390


Using Canadian Crime counting methods (per 100,000 people)


New Zealand total violent crime = 551
Canadian total violent crime = 982


If we then take American methods as standard, we can produce a new table which truly compares violent crimes in English speaking countries.

Violent Crimes per 100,000 people:

Australia 121
New Zealand 133
England & Wales 153
Canada 237
United States 506

Within New Zealand itself 'high crime' areas are 2, 3 or 4 times worse for crime than the 'low crime' areas.

[James 1077]

And I've also got a friend in the UK who compiles the UK crime figures - she says that her job is to use all of her statistical skills to show that crime is going down and is very low; when it isn't!

[Caroline and Dave]

And I've also got a friend in the UK who compiles the UK crime figures - she says that her job is to use all of her statistical skills to show that crime is going down and is very low; when it isn't!

There is obviously something seriously wrong (IMHO) with the way crime figures are produced in the UK. Where we lived in the UK inside the M25 area in Greater London the crime that everyone could see and experience was getting worse. Everyone was fearful of going out at night and virtually every house in our street had experienced a crime. Yet local police figures showed crime going down which clearly no one believed. A lot of crimes just are not reported anymore. Wheras in NZ nearly every crime is reported and as has been said each crime is reported seperately which is not the case in the UK with only the most serious crime being logged, so straight away any statistics are thrown out of the window.
This is only my view of the situation.