Where Is the Country Free of Crime?
His funeral was one of the biggest that Moscow had seen in years. Thousands of people lined the streets to pay their last respects to the young Russian whose life had been abruptly ended on March 1, 1995, by assassins’ bullets. Shot to death practically on his doorstep, Vladislav Listyev, voted journalist of the year in 1994, had been a highly popular television personality.
LESS than three weeks later, on March 20, the Tokyo subway system was in its early morning rush hour when it was struck by a poison-gas attack. Several died; many others were seriously injured.
Then on April 19, Oklahoma City became the focal point of television viewers the world over. They watched in horror as rescue workers pulled battered bodies out of the wreckage of a federal building just demolished by a terrorist bomb. The death toll was 168.
In late June, another such attack, near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killed 19 Americans and injured some 400.
These four events illustrate that crime is taking on new dimensions. “Normal” crime is increasingly being added to by brutal acts of terrorism. And all four events—each in its own particular way—show how vulnerable everyone has become to criminal attack. Whether you are at home, at work, or on the street, crime can reach out to claim you as one of its victims. Indeed, a British survey showed that almost three quarters of Britons think that they are more likely to be the victim of a crime now than they were ten years ago. The situation where you live may be similar.
Law-abiding citizens long for a government that will do more than just control crime. They want a government that will actually put an end to it. And while comparative crime rates might suggest that some governments are more effective in crime prevention than others, the overall picture shows that human government is losing its struggle against crime. Still, it is not unrealistic or Utopian to believe that government will soon put an end to crime. But which government? And when?
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A WORLD FULL OF CRIME
EUROPE: An Italian book (“The Opportunity and the Thief”) said that in a short period, the number of crimes against property in Italy had “reached peaks once considered impossible.” The Ukraine, a republic of the former Soviet Union, reported 490 crimes per 100,000 population in 1985 and 922 by 1992. The number continues to rise. No wonder a Russian newspaper (“Arguments and Facts”) wrote: “We dream of living—of staying alive—of surviving this fearful period of time . . . fear of taking a train—it could be derailed or vandalized; fear of flying—hijackings are frequent or the plane could crash; fear of riding the subway—because of collisions or explosions; fear of walking the streets—you could be caught in cross fire or be robbed, raped, beaten, or killed; fear of riding in a car—it could be set on fire, blown up, or stolen; fear of entering apartment building hallways, restaurants, or stores—you could be injured or killed in any one of them.” The Hungarian magazine HVG likened a sunny city in Hungary to “Mafia headquarters,” saying that in the last three years, it had been “the starting point for every new type of crime . . . Fear’s chain reaction is growing as people see the police unprepared to battle the Mafias.”
AFRICA: The Daily Times of Nigeria reported that the “institutions of higher learning” in a West African nation were experiencing “a wave of terror, unleashed by members of secret cults: almost to the point of grounding the pursuit of any meaningful academic exercise.” It continued: “The wave is becoming increasingly widespread, accompanied by the loss of lives and properties.” Of another African country, The Star of South Africa reported: “There are two forms of violence: inter-communal conflict, and ordinary criminal violence. The first has reduced remarkably, the second has soared.”
THE AMERICAS: The Globe and Mail of Canada reported an increase in violent crime in Canada during a recent period of 12 consecutive years, all “part of a trend that has produced a 50-per-cent increase in violence over the past decade.” Meanwhile, El Tiempo of Colombia reported that in Colombia, 1,714 kidnappings took place in a recent year, “a figure that is more than double all the kidnappings recorded in the rest of the world during the same period.” According to the Justice Department of Mexico, a sex crime was committed in its capital every four hours during a recent year. A spokeswoman pointed out that the 20th century has been characterized by a depreciation in the worth of individuals. “We live in a generation of use it and then throw it out,” she concluded.
OCEANIA: The Institute of Criminology of Australia estimated that crime there costs “at least $27 billion each year, or nearly $1600 for each man, woman and child.” This is “about 7.2 per cent of the gross domestic product.”
WORLDWIDE: The book The United Nations and Crime Prevention notes “a steady increase worldwide in criminal activity in the 1970s and 1980s.” It says: “The number of recorded crimes rose from about 330 million in 1975 to nearly 400 million in 1980 and is estimated to have reached half a billion in 1990.”
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Map and globe: Mountain High Maps® Copyright © 1995 Digital Wisdom, Inc.
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Earth on pages 3, 6, and 9: NASA photo