Weltanschauung of Crime: Revisited

Abstract

This paper compares and attempts to integrate the results of the two largest international empirical sources of crime and criminal justice data (the United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems and the International Crime Victim Survey) with respect to world crime levels. These two sources provide different pictures of conventional crime from an international perspective. One of the main factors contributing to differences in crime levels based on these two international data sources relates to police reporting patterns. These are much higher in the industrialized world compared with other developmental regions. Differences are due to a number of factors related to the propensity to report to the police, including the degree of insurance coverage and the public confidence in police. Comparative analysis stimulates discussion on the relationships between development and crime, particularly in relation to the modernization theory. The results seriously challenge modernization theory, whose empirical base is composed exclusively of official criminal justice statistics. The International Crime Victim Survey empirical base, composed of citizens' direct experience with crime and reporting to the police, serously undermines the very foundations of the prevalent explanatory paradigm regarding development and crime relationships.