The manner in which the United States' crime rate compares to other countries of similar wealth and development depends on the nature of the crime used in the comparison. Overall
crime statistic comparisons are difficult to conduct, as the definition and categorization of crimes varies across countries. Thus an agency in a foreign country may include crimes in its annual reports which the U.S. omits, and vice versa. However, some countries such as Canada have similar definitions of what constitutes a violent crime, and nearly all countries had the same definition of the characteristics that constitutes a homicide. Overall the total crime rate of the United States is higher than developed countries, specifically Europe and East Asia, with South American countries and Russia being the exceptions. Some types of reported
property crime in the U.S. survey as lower than in Germany or Canada, yet the
homicide rate in the United States is substantially higher as is the prison population. The difference in homicide rate between the U.S. and other high income countries has widened in recent years especially since the 30% rise in 2020 was not replicated elsewhere, and is also above many developing countries such as China, India and Turkey. In the European Union, homicides fell 32% between 2008 and 2019 to 3,875 while rising by 4,901 in the U.S. in 2020 alone, leaving the U.S. with a homicide rate 7x higher. In reputable estimates of crime across the globe, the U.S. generally ranks slightly below the middle, roughly 70th lowest or 100th highest.
Violent crime The reported U.S. violent crime rate includes murder, rape and sexual assault, robbery, and assault, whereas the Canadian violent crime rate includes all categories of assault, including Assault level 1 (i.e., assault not using a weapon and not resulting in serious bodily harm). A Canadian government study concluded that direct comparison of the two countries' violent crime totals or rates was "inappropriate". France does not count minor violence such as punching or slapping as assault, whereas Austria, Germany, Finland and the United Kingdom do count such occurrences. The United Kingdom similarly has different definitions of what constitutes violent crime compared to the United States, making a direct comparison of the overall figure flawed. The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports defines a "violent crime" as one of four specific offenses: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. The
British Home Office, by contrast, has a different definition of violent crime, including all "crimes against the person", including simple assaults, all robberies, and all "sexual offenses", as opposed to the FBI, which only counts aggravated assaults and "forcible rapes". Crime rates are necessarily altered by averaging neighborhood higher or lower local rates over a larger population which includes the entire city. Having small pockets of dense crime may increase a city's average crime rate. It is estimated that violent crime accounts for as much as $2.2 trillion by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, accounting for about 85% of the total cost of crime in the United States. • Australian homicide statistics include murder, and manslaughter (attempted murder is excluded). Murder rate in brackets. †Australian statistics record only sexual assault, and do not have separate statistics for rape only. Sexual assault is defined to include rape, attempted rape, aggravated sexual assault (assault with a weapon), indecent assault, penetration by objects, forced sexual activity that did not end in penetration and attempts to force a person into sexual activity; but excludes unwanted sexual touching. • Australian assault statistics calculated using per state/territory statistics, excluding Victoria as assault data is not collected. Violent crime in the United States has been in decline since colonial times. The homicide rate has been estimated to be over 30 per 100,000 people in 1700, dropping to under 20 by 1800, and to under 10 by 1900, though these estimates, particularly the older ones, should be regarded as highly speculative. In 2018, the US murder rate was 5.0 per 100,000, for a total of 15,498 murders. The United States has experienced crime dynamics similar to many other Western countries, including a marked increase in violent crime in the 1970s and 1980s, followed by a
crime drop since then, also a common pattern in Western Europe. This crime dynamics was somewhat different in Eastern Europe, where the peak in violent crime was reached in the 1990s, after the fall of the
Iron Curtain, where the
Revolutions of 1989 and the
dissolution of the Soviet Union were followed by a period of socioeconomic turmoil, and
crime in the 1990s in post-Soviet states reached high levels.
Russia reached a homicide peak of 32.16 per 100,000 in 1994. In the United States, the highest homicide rate in recent history was reached in 1980, at 10.2 per 100,000. Homicide rates vary considerably by country. According to
UNDOC, the homicide rate per 100,000 (data from 2022 or 2023) is above 40 per 100,000 in
Jamaica,
Ecuador,
South Africa and
Haiti, but lower than 0.2 per 100,000 in
Singapore,
Qatar and
Oman. In the
European Union, the homicide rate is 0.9 per 100,000 (as of 2020), but it varies by country, with
Latvia having the highest homicide rate at 4.9 per 100,000. In Europe, outside the European Union, the highest homicide rate is in
Russia (6.7 per 100,000, as of 2021). In the United States, the number of homicides where the victim and offender relationship was undetermined has been increasing since 1999 but has not reached the levels experienced in the early 1990s. In 14% of all
murders, the victim and the offender were strangers. Spouses and family members made up about 15% of all victims, about one-third of the victims were acquaintances of the assailant, and the victim and offender relationship was undetermined in over one-third of homicides. Gun involvement in homicides were
gang-related homicides which increased after 1980, homicides that occurred during the commission of a felony which increased from 55% in 1985 to 77% in 2005, homicides resulting from arguments which declined to the lowest levels recorded recently, and homicides resulting from other circumstances which remained relatively constant. Because gang killing has become a normal part of
inner cities, many including police hold preconceptions about the causes of death in inner cities. When a death is labeled gang-related it lowers the chances that it will be investigated and increases the chances that the perpetrator will remain at large. In addition, victims of gang killings often determine the priority a case will be given by police. Jenkins (1988) argues that many serial murder cases remain unknown to police and that cases involving Black offenders and victims are especially likely to escape official attention. According to the
FBI, "When the race of the offender was known, 53.0 percent were black, 44.7 percent were white, and 2.3 percent were of other races. The race was unknown for 4,132 offenders. (Based on Expanded Homicide Data Table 3). Of the offenders for whom gender was known, 88.2 percent were male." According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, from 1980 to 2008, 84 percent of white homicide victims were killed by white offenders and 93 percent of black homicide victims were killed by black offenders. According to the CDC, between 1999 and 2014 there were 185,718 homicides from use of a firearm and 291,571 suicides using a firearm. The U.S. gun homicide rate in 2019 was 18 times the average rate in other developed countries. Despite a significant increase in the sales of firearms since 1994, the US has seen a drop in the annual rate of homicides using a firearm from 7.0 per 100,000 population in 1993 to 3.6 per 100,000 in 2013.
Property crime According to a 2004 study by the
Bureau of Justice Statistics, looking at the period from 1981 to 1999, the United States had a lower surveyed residential
burglary rate in 1998 than Scotland, England, Canada,
the Netherlands, and Australia. The other two countries included in the study, Sweden and Switzerland, had only slightly lower burglary rates. For the first nine years of the study period the same surveys of the public showed only Australia with rates higher than the United States. The authors noted various problems in doing the comparisons including infrequent data points. (The United States performed five surveys from 1995 to 1999 when its rate dipped below Canada's, while Canada ran a single telephone survey during that period for comparison.) According to a 2001 report from
UNICEF, the United States has the highest rate of deaths from child abuse and neglect of any industrialized nation, at 2.4 per 100,000 children; France has 1.4, Japan 1, UK 0.9 and Germany 0.8. According to the US Department of Health, the state of Texas has the highest death rate, at 4.1 per 100,000 children, New York has 2.5, Oregon 1.5 and New Hampshire 0.4. A 2018 report from the Congressional Research Service stated, at the national level, violent crime and homicide rates have increased each year from 2014 to 2016. In 2016, data from the
National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) revealed that approximately 1,750 children died from either abuse or neglect; further, this is a continuing trend with an increasing 7.4% of crimes against children from 2012 to 2016 and these statistics can be compared to a rate of 2.36 children per 100,000 children in the United States general population. In addition, 44.2% of these 2016 statistics are specific to physical abuse towards a child.
Human trafficking Human trafficking is categorized into the following three groups: (1) sex trafficking; (2) sex and labor trafficking; and (3) labor trafficking; In addition, the rate of domestic minor sex trafficking has exponentially increased over the years.
Sex trafficking of children also referred to as commercial sexual exploitation of children, is categorized by the following forms: pornography, prostitution, child sex tourism, and child marriage. Profiles of traffickers and types of trafficking differ in the way victims are abducted, how they are treated, and the reason for the abduction. In the year 2016, the vast majority (84.9%) of traffickers were men, with an average age of 36. Approximately 70% of the offenders were citizens of the United States, and nearly half (49.4%) had minimal or no previous criminal record. According to a 2017 report from the National Human Trafficking Hotline (NHTH), out of 10,615 reported survivors of sex trafficking, 2,762 of those survivors were minors. The U.S. Department of Justice defines Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) as a range of crimes and activities involving the sexual abuse or exploitation of a child for the financial benefit of any person or in exchange for anything of value (including monetary and non-monetary benefits) given or received by any person. These crimes against children, which may occur at any time or place, rob them of their childhood and are extremely detrimental to their emotional and psychological development.
Types of human sex trafficking In
pimp-controlled trafficking, the pimp typically is the only trafficker involved who has full physical, psychological and emotional control over the victim. In
gang-controlled trafficking, a large group of people has power over the victim, forcing the victim to take part in illegal or violent tasks for the purpose of obtaining drugs. Another form is called
Familial trafficking, which differs the most from the two mentioned above because the victim is typically not abducted. Instead, the victim is forced into being sexually exploited by family members in exchange for something of monetary value, whether that's paying back debt, or obtaining drugs or money. This type of sexual exploitation tends to be the most difficult to detect, yet remains as the most prevalent form of human sex trafficking within the United States. • produce, distribute, receive and possess child pornography • engage in online enticement of children for sexual purposes • engage in the sex trafficking of children • travel across state lines or to foreign countries and sexually abuse children A 2011 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics examining the characteristics of suspected human trafficking incidents from 2008-10 noted that roughly 94% of confirmed victims identified as female and over half were 17 years old or younger. ==Geography of crime==