Importance of Crime Rate For a Country

The Crime Rate of any country is an official statistic that reflects certain particular defining points for a country. The nature and the general motives behind the crime is usually immaterial, and statisticians rarely concern themselves with value-oriented appraisal of data. Instead, the crime rate of a country is usually decided on the number of officially lodged cases of crime, collated over a period of usually a year.

Qualitative judgments rarely influence the statistic in a country, and hence, a petty case of thievery would effectively influence the statistic as much as a capital crime. The thing to note about these statistics within a particular time-frame is that the compilation process is usually based on official criminal reports and investigations. Hence, crime statistics often tend to overlook unofficial instances of criminal activities, and unreported/unproven crimes.

The Crime rate is often considered to be an extremely important index to judge the welfare and the quality/standard of living within a particular country. Usually, such records for a particular country are gathered, collated and published by global agencies like the Interpol and the U.N law-keeping corps. Such surveys can be unbiased reportage of particularly prevalent crime trends within any country, thereby serving as a generalized index for law and order within a country.

However, the statistic alone is not a completely reflective tool that could be directly applied to ascertain the social conditions of every economy. Typically, these 'statistics' don't really show the amount of human-rights violation and subversion of human rights as perpetrated by the state. Hence, state-sponsored acts of terrorism, dictatorial violence and instances of political violence often go unincorporated within the official crime-statistic of an economy.

Usually, the collection and collation of data to build crime databases follow some particular assortment procedures. When done within domestic boundaries, like the FBI (the Federal Bureau of Investigation) in America, which is directly under Homeland Security, enforcement reports form only a part of it.

The computation is usually a demographic-tabulation exercise, where crimes committed within particular blocks, or districts or states are considered. These reports are then verified against known records of criminal offences/ reported legal violations, records of convicts and records/statements filed by victims. Usually, the crime index for a particular year is the weighed-average of these three reports, and generally is reflective of the success of various police departments/enforcement agencies.

Although the crime rate is generally reflective of the official enforcement status and law-and-order scene, they have to be carefully verified for accuracy in some cases. There are numerous criminal cases like traffic violations, petty skirmishes and cases of bribery etc. which might be under-reported by the local police authorities. Every instance of criminal activity could only be reported and included in the crime rate statistic after the process of conviction, or some parallel solution has been reached, and the case is no longer sub-judice.

Addition of these cases, many of which might take years before they are resolved, to the crime statistics of subsequent years may be a tad difficult. Hence, the criminal activities index is most often an unbiased, but more often that not, a slightly exhausting and flawed system of reporting the law-and-order situation in any country.

Street Crime Vs Corporate Crime - Which is More Damaging to the Country?

Lots of people believe that street crime is a very serious problem in this country. Others however, believe that corporate crime is far worse. Without a doubt, corporate crime is far more damaging to our society than all the street crimes put together. As a matter of fact, when one compares the dollar amount lost and bodily injuries inflicted as result of both crimes, corporate crime is way ahead of street crime. The FBI estimates that the total dollar amount lost to street crimes annually is about $4 billion. Now, this figure is chump change compared to the corporate crime losses from Enron, WorldCom and Tyco. Corporate health care fraud alone costs the taxpayers of this country about $300 billion, annually. Remember the savings and loan fraud of the nineties, called the biggest white collar crime in history, when a whooping $500 billon of taxpayers' money went down the drain.

Well, some say corporate crime is not violent compared to street crime. They say victims of corporate crimes are usually not seriously injured or killed. This is absolutely false. Corporate crime can also be violent. According to the FBI, about 16,000 people are killed in street crimes in this country, annually. Now, compare this to the 56,000 who die every year as a result of corporate criminal negligence. These are people who die from occupational diseases, environmental pollution, contaminated foods, and hazardous products and so on. Case in point, the recent deaths of 25 workers in a West Virginia coal mine, where the company knew these workers were operating in unsafe conditions.

Unbelievably, prior to this preventable tragedy, this same company had received 458 citations from federal inspectors. But the company believes that it's cheaper to run the mine in an unsafe way and risks people's lives than it is for them to comply with the laws. And to make matters worse, a couple of years ago the Department of Justice introduced what they referred to as the deferred prosecution agreement. With this agreement they can bring charges against a company and then tell the company, if you behave yourself for the next couple of years and stay out trouble, we will drop all the charges. Makes you wonder if they are on the corporate criminal's side or against them.

In conclusion, corporate crime is by far the most damaging crime in this country. While street murders are prosecuted every day, here in the United States, deaths from corporate criminal negligence are neither prosecuted as homicides nor as a violation of state or federal laws. Corporate crime is a cancer that is slowly killing this country and we must all work to toward getting rid of it.

Michael Imana is a freelance writer. His articles focuses mainly on personal, home and business security issues. He has published several ebooks on self-defense and home security products. He helped started Prosafety Systems, an internet-based company that specializes in providing the very latest in personal, home and business security products. He is dedicated to helping people protect themselves, their homes and their businesses.

http://www.myprosafety.com
http://www.myprospy.com

Street Crime Vs Corporate Crime - Which Is More Damaging to the Country?

When the community is moving towards progress, it is expected that the crimes will also increase and it can be therefore be concluded that progress means crime. Wherever a community exists, people should expect that crime is present because crime is inevitable as part of the sociological aspect of the community derived from the conflict between individuals. A human being must have to think in advance its defense against the criminals and always anticipate the occurrence of crime because crime will definitely come and find its own way to surface.

This dilemma has been present since the beginning of the history of human race because crime has been pre-planted into the human brain. If an individual cannot control the animal thing inside its fragile mind then there is a high probability that crime will occur. When crime occurs it will definitely leaves a damage of certain amount to lives or properties. Whether someone hates crime or not, a person must have to be accustomed to it and ensure yourself all the time to have enough shields and counter defenses when it strikes in surprise.

What is street crime? It is an offense that transpired in our streets or highways committed by a person inclined to violate the law and the few example of that is a simple pick pocketing, and to a much higher one, the highway robbery. Street crime is usually committed by a single individual or by a group. The amount of damage involve in this crime is usually of little value, however, there are lot of instances that the amount damage is also huge especially in the case of bank robbery which is also considered as street crime.

What is corporate crime? It is an offense in violation of the law usually perpetrated by corporation or its officers and employees. This crime is more complicated and the weight of this crime is really huge and the damage is certainly vast. Corporate crime is very well structured. Sometime a corporation or a juridical entity is usually used by those big time syndicates as front or shield in order to hide the true nature of their illegal transactions. Corporate crime is much dangerous since it has so many linkages. Gathering evidence that will prove corporate crime is really hard and it is very challenging because a case investigator must have to tie up or link its evidence gathered from one point to another.

Street crime usually takes a small amount of money while the potential amount of money involve in corporate crime is really huge. Street crime is habitually committed by a single individual or by group while corporate crime is always driven by a number of individual or group. The effect of street crime when it comes to a value of money involve has of little damage to the country. But if we talk about tourism industry street crime is really dangerous since it will drive away the potential visitors in coming to areas where street crimes are rampant. On the other hand corporate crime can have a vast potential of damage to country especially when it involves economic sabotage.

With regards to which crime is more damaging to the country, the answer is either of the two it depends of what sector in the society we are trying to address and the extent of damage incurred. These two categories of crimes we have discussed have both the potential of damaging the country in the great extent possible.

He is a poet and he authored the poetry book: Whisper of Life. He is an avid lover of poetry and born and raised in Surigao City, Philippines.

He earned two baccalaureate degrees: Bachelor of Science in Accountancy and Bachelor of Science in Criminology. He has also earned 36 academic units in Master of Public Administration. He is a registered criminologist. Please visit his personal website @ http://www.cesargealogo.com