Comparing crime rates across borders is notoriously difficult, primarily because of the different definitions of different categories of crimes (e.g. is a suicide a murder or not ?), but also because of different approaches to policing: rape reporting to the police varies from country to country and it seems the way the police treat victims has a large impact on the likelihood of reporting.
There are two main approaches to collect crime statistics : (i) based on crimes reported to the police and (ii) by polling a representative sample of the population...
...for reported violent crime, a better source than statistics from individual countries, which are distorted by differing national crime definitions, are international comparative statistics by Interpol, which are said to be based on more standardised definitions of crime categories. However, intriguingly, Interpol's international crime statistics have recently been removed from its website. Clearly, such information needs to be hidden from ordinary citizens(who are paying Interpol with their taxes) to prevent them from reaching any wrong judgments...
In the latest published ICVS, (International Crime Victim Survey 2003?) the percentage of the population which claims a personal experience of crime (excluding murder) during the preceding twelve months is higher in all countries than official statistics would lead one to assume : ranging from 16.4% in Norway to 31.5% in the Netherlands. The US (24.2%) and Canada (25.2%) are both average.
more stats/complete article http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1758
~Concerning the stats from the International Crime Victim Survey would it be fair to question what percentage of people are claiming a personal "first-hand" experience with these crimes? (And not a friend of a friend...)
Could this survey more accurately measure a population's perceptions of (certain) crimes, rather then unreported crimes?
Are some countries more crime aware or survey friendly than others?
Do populations experience the same crimes in the same way?