CRIME RATESunder the age of sixteen, while the NCVS does not
ask about crimes involving victims under age twelve.
Further problems arise with the definitions of
offenses. In the United States, for example, aggra-
vated assaults include attempted murders and al-
most any assault in which a weapon is used or
assaults for the purpose of inflicting severe or
aggravated injury. In England attempted murders
receive separate treatment while the assaults most
similar to Part I aggravated assaults are ‘‘woundings.’’
Woundings require some kind of cut or wound
where the skin or a bone is broken, or medical
attention is needed, whereas common assault oc-
curs if the victim is punched, kicked or jostled,
with negligible or no injury.
Since 1981 definitions of rape have changed
substantially in England. Until 1981, to be classi-
fied as a rape an incident required a male offender
and female victim and the penetration of the
vagina by the penis. Husbands could not be con-
victed of raping their wives, and males under age
fourteen could be convicted of a rape. By 1996
rapes could involve offenders as young as ten,
spousal victims, male victims, and anal intercourse.
In the United States, the UCR definition of rape
includes male victims, male or female offenders,
spousal victims, anal intercourse, and other sexual
acts. With these nontrivial problems in mind, we
compare crime rates (based both on surveys and
police records) in England and the United States.
Table 3 presents victimization rates for rob-
bery, assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft in
the United States and England (based on the
NCVS and the BCS) for the years 1981 and 1995
(Langan and Farrington 1998). Perhaps the most
surprising result is that the estimated victimization
rates in England are higher than in the United
States for these crimes in 1995. The surveys also
indicate substantial increases in robbery, assault,
burglary, and motor vehicle theft from 1981 to
1995 in England and decreases for all but motor
vehicle theft in the United States. The cross-coun-
try comparisons of these absolute rates may be
more problematic than over-time comparisons with-
in the countries—given that the victimization sur-
vey methods and the definitions of these four
crimes changed little in these countries over
this period.
Table 4 presents crime rates based on police
records (Langan and Farrington 1998). In this
1981 1995
U.S. England U.S. England
Robbery 7.4 4.2 5.3 7.6
Assault 12.0 13.1 8.8 20.0
Burglary 105.9 40.9 47.5 82.9
Motor Vehicle 10.6 15.6 10.8 23.6
TheftVictim Survey Crime Rates per 1,000
in the United States and England:
1981 and 1995Table 3
SOURCE: Langan and Farrington 1998.table, we report rates per 100,000 residents be-
cause of the relatively low rates for homicide and
rape. The rates in Table 4 reinforce the patterns
reported in Table 3, which showed a substantial
increase in crime rates from 1981 to the mid-1990s
in England for robbery, assault, burglary, and
motor vehicle theft. Table 4 also shows higher
rates for these crimes (except for robbery) in
England than in the United States in 1996. Two
new crimes appear in this table: Homicide, for
which the rate in the United States is several times
higher than in England, for both 1981 and 1996
(most criminologists agree that homicide rates in
the United States are very high by international
standards) and rape, which shows a dramatic in-
crease from 4.19 to 21.77 per 100,00 in England
(this results, at least in part, from changes in the
legal definition of rape that occurred in England
between 1981 and 1996).Although we could attempt other compari-
sons, most such comparisons involve even greater
difficulties than those between the United States
and England. Some countries do not differentiate
between simple and aggravated assaults; others do
not record any but the most severe assaults when
the assault occurs within the family. As noted, legal
definitions of rape may differ widely (even over
time within the same country), reports of burgla-
ries may require breaking and entering into a
business or residence, only entering, or even break-
ing into an outbuilding.Homicide represents the crime with the most
consistent definition across countries: the inten-
tional taking of another person’s life without legal
justification. Even here some countries may not
separate justifiable from unjustifiable homicides.