Sir:
On 10 Oct 06 you wrote: “Ironically, the risk of getting murdered here in the US is higher than it is there. But England clearly has higher rates for nearly all other crimes–both violent and non-violent”. In fact England has more murders than the US. It is all to do with how they work out the numbers. You would think to be classed as a murder someone would have to be murdered but it does not work this way.
In the US the way to class a death as murder is if the police case starts of as a murder case i.e. A body is found in the with blood on its head the first officer on the scene will report it as a homicide so it will be added to the U.S.A. murder rate list. If it is found that they had a heart attack and then hit there head on the floor its still adds to the murder rate.
So as you can see the US is a lot safer than they make out.
In the UK to make the list someone has to be found guilt of murder and then it is added to the murder rate of the year they are found guilty. So if a person kills 20 in 2006 and found guilty in 2010 all 20 are added to the murder rate for 2010.
Dr. H. Shipman killed himself in 2001 but in 2003 he was found to have killed 172 (it could had been as high as 300+ he was in jail for murder at the time) of his patient. So 172 deaths were added to the murder rate calculations for 2003. As you can see the worse job the Police [and courts] do, the better the UK looks for murder rate. – Simon in England
Letter Re: Prospects for the UK after TEOTWAWKI
