Importance of Crime Rate For a Country

The Crime Rate of any country is an official statisticeconomy.
that reflects certain particular defining points for aUsually, the collection and collation of data to build
country. The nature and the general motives behindcrime databases follow some particular assortment
the crime is usually immaterial, and statisticians rarelyprocedures. When done within domestic boundaries,
concern themselves with value-oriented appraisal oflike the FBI (the Federal Bureau of Investigation) in
data. Instead, the crime rate of a country is usuallyAmerica, which is directly under Homeland Security,
decided on the number of officially lodged cases ofenforcement reports form only a part of it.
crime, collated over a period of usually a year.The computation is usually a demographic-tabulation
Qualitative judgments rarely influence the statistic in aexercise, where crimes committed within particular
country, and hence, a petty case of thievery wouldblocks, or districts or states are considered. These
effectively influence the statistic as much as a capitalreports are then verified against known records of
crime. The thing to note about these statistics withincriminal offences/ reported legal violations, records of
a particular time-frame is that the compilation processconvicts and records/statements filed by victims.
is usually based on official criminal reports andUsually, the crime index for a particular year is the
investigations. Hence, crime statistics often tend toweighed-average of these three reports, and
overlook unofficial instances of criminal activities, andgenerally is reflective of the success of various police
unreported/unproven crimes.departments/enforcement agencies.
The Crime rate is often considered to be anAlthough the crime rate is generally reflective of the
extremely important index to judge the welfare andofficial enforcement status and law-and-order scene,
the quality/standard of living within a particularthey have to be carefully verified for accuracy in
country. Usually, such records for a particular countrysome cases. There are numerous criminal cases like
are gathered, collated and published by globaltraffic violations, petty skirmishes and cases of
agencies like the Interpol and the U.N law-keepingbribery etc. which might be under-reported by the
corps. Such surveys can be unbiased reportage oflocal police authorities. Every instance of criminal
particularly prevalent crime trends within any country,activity could only be reported and included in the
thereby serving as a generalized index for law andcrime rate statistic after the process of conviction,
order within a country.or some parallel solution has been reached, and the
However, the statistic alone is not a completelycase is no longer sub-judice.
reflective tool that could be directly applied toAddition of these cases, many of which might take
ascertain the social conditions of every economy.years before they are resolved, to the crime
Typically, these 'statistics' don't really show thestatistics of subsequent years may be a tad difficult.
amount of human-rights violation and subversion ofHence, the criminal activities index is most often an
human rights as perpetrated by the state. Hence,unbiased, but more often that not, a slightly
state-sponsored acts of terrorism, dictatorial violenceexhausting and flawed system of reporting the
and instances of political violence often golaw-and-order situation in any country.
unincorporated within the official crime-statistic of an