Who is more violent? British or American

I'm off to live in Austria.

 

I understand you can buy houses with very well insulated cellars.

 

I'm confused, what freedoms have we given up? You haven't been able to walk around armed for a century and you can't realistically expect privacy in a city centre. We have a murder rate of 1.35 and less than 50 gun deaths a year. Against that, we don't have the patriot act, so if you want to talk about loss of freedoms for little measurable gain......

 

That's 13.5 Ben. Still, 13.5 against 56 homicides per million gives us the closest comparison of which is currently the most dangerous place to live.

 

It's 13.5 per million, murder rates are usually expressed per 100,000

 

I doubt the US is more violent than the UK or vice versa. The murder rate did seem to be higher in the US though. Which seems to suggest when violence does breakout the end result is even more tragic in the US.

 

But can't "violence" be seen as the chance of being a victim AND the extent of the violence that does happen?
A country where 1000 in 100,000 people get slapped in the face is (using aiki's definition) more violent than a country where 500 people get shot.
But I know where I'd rather live.

 

It is very difficult to compare apples and oranges.

The homicide rate comparison is a good one as it is like with like.

The best comparison for violent crime I can make is this:

I'll take the FBI figures for aggravated assault. That's one of the four main forms of crime classified as violent crime by them. The others are murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape and robbery.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/uc...he-u.s.-2011/violent-crime/aggravated-assault

Note that the figures for aggravated assault provided only include serious injuries caused by weapons. That's a very important point made at the bottom of the page.

So, what are those figures?

What are the equivalent figures for England / Wales?

That's a difficult one as we present data differently. I'll use the old BCS report used in the video initially (now replaced by ONS reports).
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/public.../crime-research/hosb1011/hosb1011?view=Binary

Page 56:

Page 58:

Note these figures include the "murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, and forcible rape" categories excluded by the FBI figure above. They also include violence without weapons.

So, how to get a comparable figure? Well the easiest way is to look at serious injuries caused by weapons. In that year weapons were used in 20% of all violent crime (including violent crime without injury) (see table 3.04). Knives and firearms were used in 6% and 1% of all violent crime respectively (see table 3.04).
Serious injury involving a knife: 14,012 (table 3.07)
Serious injury involving a firearm: 298 (table 3.05)

If we add up the number of people seriously injured by firearms and blades: 14,310. That isn't a total figure as it won't include people hurt by stones, glass, other stabbing implements etc. Since firearms and blades were only used in 7% of violent crime (in total, not violent crime with serious injury), and weapons were used in 20% of all violent crime, we could be unscientific and assume the other weapons caused roughly equal damage and multiply 14310 by 3 to give us an estimated figure of 42,930.

If we look at the most recent crime report from on ONS (which now issues these reports instead of the Home Office) page 18 notes that

So, the comparative figure for US violent crime with injury caused by weapons against England/Wales violent crime with injury is an estimated 751,131 against a solid 38,766 - that's 19.38 times more serious injuries in the USA. The USA would seem to have a population that is 5.5 times that of england/Wales:

England/Wales in 10/11 had a population of 56.1 million according to the ONS.
USA population in 2011 was roughly 311,800,000.

These are still not completely accurate comparisons, but even given the margin for error, the picture is very clear.

Looking at it from that perspective it would appear that (even with the exclusion of USA serious injury from unarmed violence figures) you are far more likely to have a serious injury from violence in the USA than in England and Wales.

 

Thanks for the post JWT. That took some time to put together. In many ways it's still the wild west where I live!

 

From personal experience, I have witnessed over the years the reporting of crimes (and any other relevant statistics that have impact outside of the reporting organization) to be manipulated more and more over time as the way data and information is now being shared and presented due to advances in technology.

Or perhaps the advances in technology allow greater insight into the manipulation of the data.

Either way I wouldn't put any weight on a survey like this, especially comparing two different surveys created by two different (though both manipulative) entities.

Also, comparing US crime is incredibly difficult when you factor in that it is a hodgepodge of data from each state having a vastly different GDP, Legislation and therefore micro economy.

Also, from personal experience. Britain is way more violent than the US regarding physical attacks in bars and the street etc, but the US shooting related crimes are a lot higher (maybe that is why people are nicer in a bar). Though I am actually pro gun reform I think it might be a factor that is true in containing low level violence (just that the costs of that benefit are too high a price for me)

 

I think the binge drinking culture in the UK means violence is more likely to break out after closing (but that may not be true), but I also think that 90% of the time, all of the participants are complicit in that violence. Innocent people don't get caught up in after closing brawls very often. Looking back, I can see how I was an active participant in every fight I had after a night out and since I grew up, it hasn't happened again.

 

Interestingly, charting US violent crime over time gives this exact same curve. I guess public safety was not actually improved by the Safety Dance.

 

Similar curves, very different numbers.

 

but...but...alex jones says that we're less violent because we have more guns. england is so violent, look at the stats! england needs more guns! that will show those violent english to stop it.

 

MOD hat on. :hat:
Let's not turn this into a pro or anti gun debate! There have been enough of those recently! :Angel:

 

Crime in every Western nation has followed a similar curve, no-one's entirely sure why.
However, as JWT says, the figures themselves are very different. However, as you are 25 times more likely to die by gunshot in the US and 4-5 times more likely to be murdered overall then our laws in those regards are probably working.

 

Another recomendation for "The Better Angels of our nature". Some really good insights there.
We're all being nicer to each other and don't accept the same level of violence we used to endure (in all sorts of areas like child spanking, animals abuse, etc etc as well as self defence sorts of violence).