Criminal negligence .

Criminal negligence. The latest copy of Perspective from the UK polling agency Populus says that more British households have been a victim of some sort of crime than American or Canadian households.

You would not know if from the official crime figures, but according to a new Gallup survey, 36% of British respondents reported experiencing at least one of eight different types of crime, compared with 33% of Canadians and 32% of Americans. 8% of Britons surveyed had been a victim of some type of violent crime, compared with 5% in Canada and the US.

In the UK, there has been argument about crime statistics for many years. Governments like to talk about reported crime statistics. But then a lot of crime goes unreported. Crime surveys, like these, reveal that the true level of crime is higher.

Why does so much crime go unreported in Britain? Some, of course, is minor and people think it is not worth bothering. In other cases, victims are too embarrassed (eg in rape) or scared (eg in domestic or gang violence) to come forward. Much else, I suspect, goes unreported because even though the offence is serious, people think that the police will not do anything anyway. When the paperwork on making an arrest can land officers with five or six hours’ paperwork, they may be right: frontline resources are stretched too thin, back-office bureaucracy is too fat.

Perhaps that is why North Americans have much more confidence that the police can protect them from violent crime: two thirds of Canadians (67%) and just over half of Americans (53%) think this, but only 42% of Britons. [Adam Smith Institute Blog]

Or perhaps Britons just have a better grasp on reality. Unless you are an important member of the nobility, such as a Mayor or Congressman, there is no chance of the police protecting you from violent crime, because they won’t be around when it happens. The best you can hope for (if you live) is that the police will find whoever attacked you and arrest him.