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Crime trends in modern democracies since 1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Ted R. Gurr
Ted R. Gurr*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University Evanston, III., U S.A.
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Extract

In a recent historical study of crime and conflict in London, Stockholm, an Sydney we found remarkable parallels in their experience of common crime. The incidence of offenses against persons and property, as registered in police reports and court records, declined by an average ratio of 8 to 1 between the 1830's and the 1930's. Since then, and especially since the 1950's, rates of common crime have turned sharply upward. The evidence seemed to rule out several plausible explanations of this reversing trend. First, we found no evidence that the trends were due to changes in the criminal law or police detection and reporting practices. Common crime did not become simply less visible through out the 19th century and then more visible in the mid-20th century. Nor could the reversal be attributed to the changing effectiveness of the law, police, and courts. The institutions and policies which evolved during a century of improving public order were much the same during the “crime wave” of the 1960's as they were during the orderly decades between the two world wars. We concluded that the reversing trend signified real and substantial changes in the magnitude of threatening social behavior — changes that were common to all three societies.

Information

Type
I. — Comparative Criminology: Global Perspectives
Information
International Annals of Criminology , Volume 16 , Issue 1-2 , 1977 , pp. 41 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 International Society for Criminology

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Footnotes

*

This work was carried out with the support of a 1976 Common Problem fellowship awarded the author by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, supplemented by funds for research assistance and analysis from the “Reaction to Crime” project at Northwestern University's Center for Urban Affairs, a project supported by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Erika Gurr collected and evaluated the national crime data, their analysis was carried out by Robin Gillies. Institutional support was provided by the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University, and by Northwestern University.

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