Dr. John Lott and CPRC senior fellow Kesten Green, who is also a researcher at the Adelaide University, College of Business and Law, have a new op-ed piece in the Spectator Australia.
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The US experienced a serious violent crime increase of 59 per cent during the Biden Administration. Despite that increase, Americans remained safer from violent crime than Australians.
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Yes, you did just read that correctly.
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Australians are more likely to be victims of violent crime than Americans; much more, in fact.
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In the most recent comparable years, the surveyed US violent victimisation rate was 23.3 per 1,000, while Australia’s was 39 per 1,000 respondents who were victims of ‘one or more selected personal crimes’. Due to measurement differences, Australia’s 67 per cent higher victimisation rate understates the crime victimisation of Australians relative to American.
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We note that US citizens have far greater and easier access to firearms for self-defence and defence of others than do Australians, and that legislation, regulation, and enforcement in the US is much more supportive of defensive use of firearms than is the case in Australia. There are more than 1.6 million defensive gun uses each year in the US, almost 21 million holders of permits to carry a concealed handgun, and in 29 of the 50 US states a permit is not needed.
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In this short review of the statistics, we emphasise total per capita violent crime estimates from crime victimisation surveys, rather than from the subset of violent crime that was reported to the police. (Reporting of crime is low in both countries, with reporting rates under 60 per cent for all categories.) For the US, the figures are from the Bureau of Justice Criminal Victimisation report for 2024 (NCVS) and, for Australia, from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Crime Victimisation report for the 2023-24 financial year (ABS).
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The US crime victimisation survey includes 240,000 respondents and the Australian 26,176, which represent broadly similar proportions of the respective countries’ total populations. The US and Australian national surveys are related to the International Crime Victimisation Survey (ICVS) which was last conducted in full in 2005. The surveys capture 12-month periods and capture both crimes that were reported to the police, and those that were not.
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Comparisons between the US and Australian victimisation rates for key violent crime categories are summarised in the table, below.
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There is an important difference between the surveys: the Australia data is the proportion of people or of households that have been victimised by crime at least once during the year, whereas the US data are based on counts of crimes. That is, when an Australian is robbed twice in one year, only one victimisation is reported in the ABS statistics. In the US’s NCVS, that would count as two victimisations. The figures in Column C in the table below are indicative repeat victimisation multipliers estimated from data presented in a 2015 Centre for Problem-Oriented Policing Conference report ‘Analysing Repeat Victimisation’ and are used to calculate the figures in Column D for comparisons with the US figures in Column A.
The age bases of the figures also differ, with the US NCVS including victims aged from 12 years and older, while the ABS figures are for victims 15 years and older and, in the case of sexual assault, 18 years and older. Australia’s physical assault figures may include more minor incidents.
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The dramatically higher rates of violent crime victimisation in Australia shown in the table above are consistent with the findings of the International Crime Victimisation Survey, last completed in 2005, which ensured the same definitions were used and questions asked across countries. And the same age range was also covered.
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