"kontiki" wrote in message
...
Jim Logajan wrote:

The U.K. has more crimes per capita than the U.S.!
And New Zealand has the second highest rate in the world!

Interesting. I have heard reports that crime rates have gone
up considerably in the UK since they have enacted a virtual
total gun ban.

Add Canada to the list as well.

http://canadaonline.about.com/librar.../bligunreg.htm
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/493636.html

"For the year 2003, per 100,000 population, Canada had 8,530 crimes, and the
U.S. 4,267. For crimes of violence, 958 vs. 523. For property crimes, 4,275
vs. 3,744."

Yes, the UK crime rate has skyrocketed and try as they might, the UK
authorities have been unable to bury their incompetence and blatent
dishonesty.

http://home.freeuk.com/minbu/crime.htm (Not a complete original)

/quote

Britain: From Bad to Worse
Dave Kopel, Dr. Paul Gallant and Dr. Joanne Eisen
Thursday, March 22, 2001

During the 19th century, and most of the 20th, Britain enjoyed a
well-deserved
reputation as an unusually safe and crime-free nation, compared to the
United
States or continental Europe. No longer. To the great consternation of
British
authorities concerned about tourism revenue, a June CBS News report
proclaimed
Great Britain "one of the most violent urban societies in the Western
world."
Declared Dan Rather: "This summer, thousands of Americans will travel to
Britain expecting a civilized island free from crime and ugliness ... [but
now]
the U.K. has a crime problem ... worse than ours."

Not surprisingly to many observers, the violent crime rate has risen
dramatically and steadily since gun bans have been instituted. That's a
trend
seen wherever strict gun control laws have been implemented. And that's the
part of the story British officials have tried to keep under wraps.

A headline in the London Daily Telegraph back on April 1, 1996, said it all:
"Crime Figures a Sham, Say Police." The story noted that "pressure to
convince
the public that police were winning the fight against crime had resulted in
a
long list of ruses to 'massage' statistics," and "the recorded crime level
bore
no resemblance to the actual amount of crime being committed."

For example, where a series of homes were burgled, they were regularly
recorded
as one crime. If a burglar hit 15 or 20 flats, only one crime was added to
the
statistics.

More recently, a 2000 report from the Inspectorate of Constabulary charges
Britain's 43 police departments with systemic under-classification of
crime -
for example, by recording burglary as "vandalism." The report lays much of
the
blame on the police's desire to avoid the extra paperwork associated with
more
serious crimes.

Britain's justice officials have also kept crime totals down by being
careful
about what to count.

"American homicide rates are based on initial data, but British homicide
rates
are based on the final disposition." Suppose that three men kill a woman
during
an argument outside a bar. They are arrested for murder, but because of
problems with identification (the main witness is dead), charges are
eventually
dropped. In American crime statistics, the event counts as a three-person
homicide, but in British statistics it counts as nothing at all. "With such
differences in reporting criteria, comparisons of U.S. homicide rates with
British homicide rates is a sham," the report concludes.

Another "common practice," according to one retired Scotland Yard senior
officer, is "falsifying clear-up rates by gaining false confessions from
criminals already in prison." (Britain has far fewer protections against
abusive police interrogations than does the United States.) As a result,
thousands of crimes in Great Britain have been "solved" by bribing or
coercing
prisoners to confess to crimes they never committed.

Explaining away the disparity between crime reported by victims and the
official figures became so difficult that, in April 1998, the British Home
Office was forced to change its method of reporting crime, and a somewhat
more
accurate picture began to emerge. In January 2000, official street-crime
rates
in London were more than double the official rate from the year before.

So what's a British politician to do when elections coincide with an
out-of-control crime wave? Calling for "reasonable" gun laws is no longer an
option. Handguns have been confiscated and long guns are very tightly
restricted. So anti-gun demagoguery, while still popular, can't carry the
entire load.

Conversely, the government would not find it acceptable to allow its
subjects
to possess any type of gun (even a licensed, registered .22 rifle) for home
protection. Defensive gun ownership is entirely illegal, and considered an
insult to the government, because it implies that the government cannot keep
the peace. Thus, in one recent notorious case, an elderly man who had been
repeatedly burglarized and had received no meaningful assistance from the
police, shot a pair of career burglars who had broken into his home. The man
was sentenced to life in prison.

The British authorities warn the public incessantly about the dangers of
following the American path on gun policy. But the Daily Telegraph (June 29,
2000) points out that "the main reason for a much lower burglary rate in
America is householders' propensity to shoot intruders. They do so without
fear
of being dragged before courts and jailed for life."

So what's the government going to do to make voters safer? One solution came
from the Home Office in April 1999 in the form of "Anti-Social Behaviour
Orders" - special court orders intended to deal with people who cannot be
proven to have committed a crime, but whom the police want to restrict
anyway.
Behaviour Orders can, among other things, prohibit a person from visiting a
particular street or premises, set a curfew, or lead to a person's eviction
from his home.

Violation of a Behaviour Order can carry a prison sentence of up to five
years.

Prime Minister Tony Blair is now proposing that the government be allowed to
confine people proactively, based on the fears of their potential danger to
society.

American anti-gun lobbyists have long argued that if America followed
Britain's
lead in severely restricting firearms possession and self-defense, then
American crime rates would eventually match Britain's. The lobbyists have
also
argued that if guns were restricted in America, civil liberties in the U.S.
would have the same degree of protection that they have in Britain. The
lobbyists are absolutely right.

/end


And this from WSJ-OpinionJournal in 2002 (Link is no longer active)

/quote
ACROSS THE POND

'Twasn't Ever Thus
Liberal snobbery helps make Britain the world's most crime-ridden country.

BY THEODORE DALRYMPLE
Sunday, December 22, 2002 12:01 a.m.

LONDON--Britain is now the world leader in very little, with the single
possible exception of crime.
Recent figures published by the U.N. show that Britain is now among the most
crime-ridden countries in the world. Its citizens are much more likely to be
attacked or robbed on the street, or have their houses burgled, than their
counterparts in, say, Russia or South Africa, let alone the U.S. Everyday
experience in Britain is quite sufficient to establish that we now live in a
deeply criminalized society.

/end