Talk:Violent crime

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 2 February 2021 and 17 March 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Benjamin.aviles1. Peer reviewers: Alexaneybold.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 12:27, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Vital article - Level 5
Violent crime is considered a Level 5 vital article. That means that this article is one of the first 50,000 articles that should be a featured article. So here is Wikipedia's view of where Violent crime fits in the scheme of things: - Cameron Dewe (talk) 22:21, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 1)  Violent crime
 * 2)  Domestic violence (Level 4)
 * 3)  School violence
 * 4)  Workplace violence
 * 5)  Violence against men
 * 6)  Violence against women

What constitutes violent crime?
What constitutes violent crime? What distinguishes it from Crime, generally? Is it merely an offence against the person but by a different name? Or is it something different? What about robbery, a riot or arson where property is involved but lives endangered too? What about burglary where the victim feels their living space has been violated? Are all sexual offences violent or is it limited to sexual assault or are there other forms of Sexual violence that might be included? Is there a common world view on the subject like there is for violence? Does violence equate to violent crime? Are they considered the same or different? Are some crimes considered violent as opposed to being classified as violence? for example there is Intimate Partner Violence, but not Intimate Partner Violent Crime. If only some crime is violent crime, which specific offences are included in the category and which are not? Why? Is the classification of a crime as violent dependent on the law or the classification system used, or does it depend on what researchers choose to study? Are there any classification standards to follow? None of these questions are really addressed by this article at the moment, so the article is not helpful in achieving a global understanding of violent crime. Has the world's understanding of violent crime changed over time? Everyone seems to throw the words violent crime around, and they appear in the headlines often, but do people really understand what they are taking about and do they always mean the same thing? - Cameron Dewe (talk) 02:34, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Violent crime by country
I added a section about violent crime by country. It draws on one research paper by New Zealand's MoJ. Consequently, it is only one opinion and may be biased. Surprisingly, there does not appear to be much else on the subject that internationally compares violent crime in such detail. UN and other international studies do collect and report crime statistics from many countries, but they do not seem to present comparable statistics or identify the statistical impacts of the differences in the ways the statistics are collected. -- Cameron Dewe 12:18, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The URL has changed to, so reference updated. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 23:37, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Sexual harassment
Is sexual harrassment really a violent crime? I mean it is bad and all, but in the same catoregy as as rape and assault? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.42.152.66 (talk) 11:53, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * If you look at the vital article hierarchy workplace violence falls under violent crime. Unfortunately, the vast majority of sexual harassment offences are not reported, for various reasons. However, those that do become public often shock people because they see the same disrespectful behaviours in their own workplaces and communities and were completely unaware of it. For some victims this crime is just as mentally corrosive and disabling as rape might be. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 22:42, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Male victims
The sentence


 * It would be useful to have an estimate of what proportion of victims of violent crime are male and why violent criminals (except rapists) disproportionately target males. Why are males far more likely to be beaten up, stabbed, shot, mugged etc. than females? Most violent criminals are amoral predators witout consciences who target the vulnerable. What makes most of them choose males (who tend to be larger and stronger than females) as victims? Jim Michael (talk) 23:58, 15 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the issue is that crime first has to be reported before it is counted. It could be that males are more willing to report a violent crime than females are. It could also be that males are more willing to take a risk and resist being intimidated because they are larger and stronger, so become victims of violent crimes rather than accept being intimidated and abused as a form of protective behaviour. Crime between intimate partners is rarely reported when it first occurs. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 23:16, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Chart
What do the stars mean? Bwrs (talk) 20:21, 1 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Do the stars mean it's a worse crime?--Bobert300 (talk) 21:39, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

"evidence shows large long-term declines in the rate of murder"
The cited source says the decline in England (not United Kingdom) is from twenty to around two per 100,000 (not from 100 to 1), and concerns homicides not murders (fig. 1., page 85). I also have some questions regarding the contents of the source. Aren't deaths from duels, by definition, "homicides"? Yet wasn't killing someone in a duel legal during most of the period under consideration? Since the cited article never mentions the word 'duel', isn't it difficult to say what kind of conclusions you can draw from its statistics? Might not the decline be explained mostly by the decline in deaths from duels? What about justifiable and excusable homicide? Why doesn't the article differentiate between (the obvious) decline in those two categories and the possible decline in culpable homicide? You can't draw the conclusion that the world has become less violent from data that doesn't differentiate between different types of homicide. That's why I'm deleting the bit that cites that article. Others may feel free to try to incorporate the information in the article in a way that is relevant to violent crime. Firrtree (talk) 21:12, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Preserve from lead
This was in the lead. The link is dead, and it's not clear if it was a international statistic or a U.S. statistic. I am preserving it here until I can find a source.
 * With the exception of rape (which accounts for 6% of all reported violent crimes), males are the primary victims of all forms of violent crime.

--Lightbreather (talk) 19:42, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Violent crime. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070612154656/http://www.stats.govt.nz/products-and-services/table-builder/crime-tables/default.htm to http://www.stats.govt.nz/products-and-services/table-builder/crime-tables/default.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers. —cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 21:04, 17 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I have updated the URL because Statistics NZ has rebuilt its website(s) after the building housing the department was demolished following the magnitude 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake in 2016. Many URLs have changed and a lot of historic on-line resources have disappeared. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 23:21, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Violent crime. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20151017210410/http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/2002/intl-comparisons-crime/section-12.html to http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/2002/intl-comparisons-crime/section-12.html#Table%20A3

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at Sourcecheck).

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 04:50, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Relevance of UK IPV study to New Zealand section
I question the relevance of a paragraph concerning a United Kingdom study into Intimate Partner Violence(IPV) to the New Zealand section. I think the relevant paragraph is better placed in a global discuss or under the relevant country the study occurs in. Unfortunately, there is no such heading, yet. It's current placement suggests a particular view of violent crime and seem like an attempt to justify why sexual offences should be seen as violent crime in New Zealand, when the law isn't written that way and Violent crime is not defined by either of the classification systems New Zealand has used. Anyway, this article does not even define what is included in violent crime let alone Intimate Partner Violence. So I don't know where to park the paragraph concerned. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 00:07, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Is intimate partner violence a sexual offense or about power and control?
I have tagged the uncited statement that:"One type of sexual offense is intimate partner violence." as being a dubious assertion. My understanding of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is that it is about one party maintaining power and control in an Intimate Partner relationship. The way most of the criminal law worldwide concerning sexual offending is written, the intimate relationship is not an element of the crime, but the ability to consent is. While I will agree that one type of intimate partner violence is a sexual offense, I don't think the reverse is true, as this statement asserts. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 00:07, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for this suggestion, Cameron! The reason I bring up intimate partner violence is because of the type of behaviors that are included in this type of violence. Also, IPV could lead to other forms of violent crimes such as abuse, threats and rape. I agree that I could have worded it better and it is not exactly the relationship being violent but rather the individuals involved. Benjamin.aviles1 (talk) 01:45, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Slapping example
Is devoting several sentences to a 2011 case of slapping in Greece really relevant to comparing the law concerning assault in several European countries? Is even pointing out the minor legal difference between jurisdictions relevant? The laws are different in different countries, but the criminality of slapping is a rather trivial difference. As it stands, citing this example disrupts the encyclopedic flow and looks more like a trivial example especially when seen in a global context. This statement would be relevant to articles devoted to the politicians concerned but in the context of worldwide or even a country level article about violent crime it seems like noise rather than something world-changing. Now if it meant the world changed its attitudes to a slap, I could understand discussing the ramifications of the incident, but as it is I cannot see its significance. It is merely disruptive. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 00:43, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * "An example is the case of Ilias Kasidiaris in 2012. Kasidaris, then spokesperson for Greece's far-right Golden Dawn party, slapped a left-wing female opponent in the face during a live televised debate. He was subsequently wanted by Greek prosecutors for assault and faced an arrest warrant."


 * BBC :
 * Above is the text I propose to remove. Wiki-link is my addition for convenience. As far as I can tell, the event is not mentioned in the Wikipedia article about him. I have preserved the citation in a citation template. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 21:47, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Violent criminals
In the lead section there is a sentence about violent criminals that list a range of criminal categories. But are these violent criminals committing violent crimes? Talking about violent criminals displays a misunderstanding about what violent crime is, its victims and the people who commit it. By focusing on the people who commit the crime, rather than the crimes the criminal commits the victim's view of the crime is discounted. Also, I think the list is inaccurate and imprecise. In my opinion, in many, if not most, jurisdictions: To address this issue I think the list should talk about the crimes or behaviours exhibited. Rather than labelling the people, one then labels the behaviour exhibited, or the crimes, instead. This allows the victims as well as the offenders experience to be considered. Also one can probably reduce the list of violent criminal behaviour to a more definitive list because there are only so many different crimes that laws exist for and the laws in various countries label similar behaviours in similar ways most of the time. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 04:52, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * aircraft hijackers, only commit a violent crime if they use, or threaten to use, force to hijack the aircraft. While hijacking the aircraft itself is not violent, convincing the crew and the passengers to go along with the hijacking by using force, is.
 * bank robbers, commit a robbery offence, which is an offence against the person that facilitate an offence against property, such as theft.
 * muggers, commit a robbery offence, too.
 * burglars, normally only commit an offence against property. Most burglars want to avoid confronting a person. If they commit an offence against the person then that is often seen as a separate offence.
 * terrorists, only commit a violent crime if their offending involves the use, or threatens the use of, force
 * carjackers, commit a robbery offence, too.
 * rapists, commit a most serious sexual assault against the person. How this crime is classified depends on what is considered violent crime in the context of a sexual offence.
 * kidnappers, commit an offence against the person.
 * torturers, commit an offence against the person.
 * active shooters, only commit an offence against the person.
 * murderers, commit an offence against the person.
 * gangsters, only commit a violent crime if they use, or threaten to use, force to facilitate other offending.
 * drug cartels, only commit a violent crime if they use, or threaten to use, force to facilitate other offending.
 * others, makes the list open-ended and can include any sort of criminal as being a violent one.

Confusing statistics
The table titled "Violent crime in the United States" is deceptive statistics: The values are not population-adjusted. I suggest replacing the table with one that has been normalized to violent crime per 100,000 population (obviously this is easy to do by simply dividing the values in the chart appropriately). Philpoleon (talk) 17:10, 11 August 2022 (UTC)