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Rath on 31 May 2009
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Kasz216 said:
Rath said:

The factors don't change crime rates but they do strongly change the measurment of crime rates. So the data is pretty worthless because it doesn't show with any accuracy the amount of crime in the country.

It depends really on if  you believe in moral absolutism or not.  If so it's pretty worthless.

If not however it has plenty of merit as what each society deems as a crime and how they report it since they are self reporting.

I don't believe in moral absolutism, however I do believe that in comparing criminality between countries you have to take a stance of at least some moral absolutism, or compare specific crimes. Otherwise you end up comparing very very different things and its all a bit pointless unless you're studying the perception of criminalities between societies rather than actual crime rates.

However if you take murder, robbery, rapes, assaults and muggings and compare them for example (which are considered criminal pretty much everywhere) and compare them you will find that the Scandinavian countries will generally be towards the bottom end of the scale.

Another interesting one to take is the number of people imprisoned per 1000 people. Though of course that also runs into problems, especially in tyranical countries where people are imprisoned for political reasons.