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Steve Kao said:

RKBA.016 - Is the United States the most violent nation?
Version 1.2 (last changed on 91/03/22 at 13:05:06)

In homicide, the US is number 11, with a murder rate of 9.60 per 100,000. The nearest European country in the Netherlands, with a homicide rate of 7.15 per 100,000. However, elimination of high crime inner city rates pushes the per capita down to 3.77, below such countries as Luxemburg (5.25), Finland (4.88), West Germany (4.47), Scotland (3.82), and somewhat barely above Sweden (3.36).

The source for those figures would appear to have been "Book of World Rankings" by George Kurian. These numbers are for homicide + attempted homicide... except for the US figure, which does not include attempts.

Homicide rates for some of the countries mentioned (1980) are Netherlands 0.8, Finland 3.3, West Germany 1.2, Scotland 1.6 and Sweden 1.2.

Of even more interest is the TREMENDOUSLY larger per capita rape numbers in the "non-violent peace loving" European counties. The Unites States at 26.30 is below such countries as Australia (90.82), West Germany (77.49), New Zealand (65.73), Netherlands (56.00), Scotland (44.69), Denmark (41.06), Sweden (40.52), Austria (30.42).

The problem is that these figures are not for rapes but sex offences. Kurian writes:

"The definition of sex offence varies widely and the data are therefore not strictly comparable. In the US only rape is included, while in other countries molestation, traffic in women and related crimes are also tabulated."

Remarkably, he neglects to draw the obvious conclusion -- that the data is worthless, since each number measures a different thing.

I was able to obtain figures for reported rapes from "The Size of the Crime Problem in Australia" by Mukherjee:

(1976, from police statistics, rates per 100,000)
Australia        6.3
West Germany    11.3
New Zealand      8.6
England & Wales  2.6
United States   26.4

Even these figures don't tell us that much about the incidence of rape, since the reporting rates could be widely different.