Crime trends in modern democracies since 1945

Abstract

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.