Welcome to life in a ''gun-free'' society
According to a story in The Courier Mail of Queensland, a United Nations-sponsored survey found that "Australia has the worst prevalence of crime among 17 industrialised countries."
From the story:
- Federal Government statistics show increases in crimes against people, rather than property.
"That's the basic picture in Australia at the moment – we're getting more violent," said Dr Tim Prenzler, head of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University. "It's not a pretty picture."
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He said that, within Australia, Queensland was better than the Northern Territory but worse than Victoria.
The 2000 International Crime Victims Survey used a telephone survey to assess the prevalence and incidence of crime in industrialised countries.
About 30 per cent of Australians told researchers they had been victimised one or more times in 1999, compared with 26 per cent in England and Wales, 21 per cent in the US and 15 per cent in Japan.
England and Wales had the highest incidence of crime, the survey showed.
Property crimes such as breaking and entering and vehicle theft traditionally accounted for much of Australian crime, but that is changing.
There were 145,420 violent crimes in 1996. By 2002, the figure had grown to 198,722 – and 80 per cent were assaults.
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