Crime in enlarged Europe: comparison of crime rates and victimization risks
ENThe paper presents an attempt to compare the International Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) data and the police statistics for a sample of industrialized and post socialist countries in Europe. The information base consists of the ICVS results from two sweeps and the crime data collected by the European Sourcebook and the Home Office. The method of comparison is based on the regression between ICVS and police crime rates. Police data between countries differ because of dissimilarities in penal systems, registration systems, definition of statistical units, etc. The ICVS responses are based on the description of criminal acts, unified across countries and indepen dent of the legal definitions and legal consequences. Therefore, ICVS data is less biased than police data. The main result of the paper is the proposal of a method for con trasting ICVS and police data on crime in Europe. It gives the possibility to indicate statistical discrepancies of rates for a single country on the basis of the entire sample. The method also allows us to identify the outlier countries with regard to differences between ICVS data and police data. Keywords: assault; comparison of crime statistics; police statistics; robbery; victimization risk. [From the publication]
