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Crime & Punishment in the U.S. and Europe

By Kent Scheidegger et al.

This post is by Julia Wobbe, a student at California State University, Sacramento. There has been much controversy about the incarceration rate in the United States, which is much higher than in European countries. It is informative to consider these differences in the context of how comparative crime rates have changed over time. The European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice, (2nd ed. 2003) and (3rd ed. 2006), reveal the rate of violent crimes and the prison population rate. United States data are given by the FBI?s Uniform Crime Reports and the Bureau of Justice Statistics website. When comparing crime rates with other countries, it is important to make sure that the data is compatible; thus we compared the standard definitions of the European Sourcebook to the definitions from Uniform Crime Reports...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime and Consequences on April 21, 2008 (boomark / email).