Cross-National Studies in Crime and Justice

• NCJ Number: 200988
• Author(s): David P. Farrington, Ph.D., Bureau of Justice Statistics; Patrick A. Langan, Ph.D., Bureau of Justice Statistics; Michael Tonry, Cambridge University; Darrick Jolliffe, Cambridge University; Carlos Carcach, Australian Institute of Criminology; Brandon C. Welsh, University of Massachusetts Lowell; Mark J. Irving, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada; Catrien C. J. H. Bijleveld, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement; Paul R. Smit, Ministry of Justice, the Netherlands; David J. Smith, University of Edinburgh; Per-Olof H. Wikström, University of Cambridge; Lars Dolmen, National Council for Crime Prevention, Sweden; Martin Killias, Ph.D., University of Lausanne, Switzerland; Philippe Lamon, D.E.S.S., University of Lausanne, Switzerland; Marcelo F. Aebi, Ph.D., University of Seville, Spain
• Date Published: September 2004
• Publication Type: Publication

Annotation

Summarizes the results from a study that documents crime and criminal punishment trends from 1981 to 1999 in eight countries: Australia, Canada, England, the Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States.

Abstract

Summarizes the results from a study that documents crime and criminal punishment trends from 1981 to 1999 in eight countries: Australia, Canada, England, the Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. To enhance comparability, each paper deals with six crimes that are similarly defined across the eight countries: murder, rape, non-commercial robbery, serious assault, household burglary, and completed motor vehicle theft. Each paper uses the same set of measures of criminal punishment. Measures include sentence length imposed, percent of sentence served, and probabilities of arrest, of conviction, and of incarceration.