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JAN VAN DIJK
MEASURING LEVELS AND TRENDS OF COMMON CRIME
One the best ways to illustrate the limited value of statistics on police-recorded
crime for comparative purposes are comparisons of levels of crime across Europe,
such as those published in the European Sourcebook or by Eurostat. Overviews
of such statistics invariably show that levels of crime are the highest in North¬
Western countries such as the Scandinavian countries, Ihe United Kingdom and
the Netherlands and the lowest in Central and Eastern Europe. Arguably the
best indicator of recorded crime is the number of any type of crime (all offences)
per capita since this rate is somewhat less compromised by differences in legal
definitions in national criminal codes than rates of special categories of crime.
According to the sourcebook the mean of all recorded offences was around 4.500
in 2016.’ In England and Wales the rate was 8.000 and in Belgium, Denmark
Finland, Germany and Sweden the rates were around 7.000. Also, Austria and the
Netherlands scored above the mean with 6.000. In contrast, all larger, formerly
socialist countries show rates far below the European mean (Bulgaria: 1450; Czech
Rep: 2.000; Hungary: 3.000; Poland: 3.000; Russia: 1300; Ukraine: 1.400). Rates
in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are all below 1.000.
As has been demonstrated by the latest round of surveys of the International
Crime Victims Survey from around 2000 (ICVS), the true level of victimization
by common crime does not differ much across Europe. The relatively low levels
of police-recorded crime in the East are largely due to low rates of reporting of
crimes by the public related to reduced levels of trust between the public and the
police and to less effective recording of such reports by the police.* The relative
under-recording of crime in the East can perhaps partly be explained by relatively
low rates of insurance of households in the East. However, it seems largely due
to the enduring effects of the soviet style of policing prevailing in the East up till
the collapse of the soviet empire. Higher rates of recorded crimes appear to be a
valid indicator of post -soviet police reforms. From this perspective, Hungary and
Poland with their rates of 3.000 emerge as the most successful early adopters of
service-oriented policing in the former soviet bloc
It goes without saying that a proper assessment of levels and trends of crime
requires the regular conduct of a standardized EU-wide victimization survey,
2 Marcelo Aebi et al., European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics,
Strasbourg, Lausanne, Council of Europe, University of Lausanne, 2017.
Jan Van Dijk, The world of crime: breaking the silence on problems of security, justice and
development across the world, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publication, 2008.
Jan Van Dijk, Procedural Justice for Victims in an International Perspective, in Gorazd
Mesko - Justice Tankebe (eds.), Trust and Legitimacy in Criminal Justice; European
perspectives, New York, NY, Springer, 2015, 53-64.
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