There is a notion that nothing happens in New Zealand, making it intrinsically safe here. Conversely, it is generally assumed that the US is relatively unsafe (based on violent crime for a modern, western nation). Theft is common in New Zealand like most places, though it seems more common here than other places I have lived. Home robberies happen, and a few exquisite examples from Taupo include a robbery where the people left town for a vacation, and came home to their house entirely empty, as if they had been moved out. Prowling is also common, as it is in most places with a lot of tourism. While being robbed is an incredible violation, things, for the most part, can be replaced. Trying to filter these reports through the exaggeration of scuttlebutt is difficult, but it seems clear, robberies happen in New Zealand, like everywhere else.
Another type of crime catches my attention more. Everyone talks about theft, and it is easy to exaggerate, or accept, this type of crime as something that "happens." Violent crime, on the other hand, is a bit easier to quantify, but maybe harder to understand. Cars get broken into, but assessing the probability of your car getting broken into is complex, as I am sure the reporting rate is proportional to the value of what is stolen. One could make some assumptions, that reporting rates are similar, average tourist and non-tourist areas, etc., but in the end common sense would still be the best method of prevention. With violent crime, while one has to make many of the same assumptions, and common sense is still a good preventative step, one can assume, that with the exception of domestic violence and sexual assault, reporting is pretty good.
Violent crime, I assert, is harder to understand, because it is fairly rare. New York City in 1990 had 2245 murders. That is the population of a small town! However, the population of New York City in 1990 was 7.3 million. Dividing the number of murders by the population would give the per capita murder rate (a very small number), then multiplying by 1,000, or 100,000 gives a murder rate (per year, while a rate needs a unit of time, it is generally left off). I will use rates per 100,000 people, though New Zealand statistics are generally given in per 1,000 (thus, I multiply their numbers by 100 for ease of comparison). Running this calculation, the murder rate in New York City in 1990 was 30.6. This is very high. Not on a world scale (countries with ongoing drug wars approach 100), but very high for a country like the US. The number is nebulous though. It no longer seems as frightening as the population of an entire town being murdered in a single city.
The other trick to rates is that a small town, say population 1,000, would have one murder every hundred years to have a murder rate of 1 per 100,000 (remember, the rate is per year). For this small town to have the same murder rate at the peak of NYC's murders it would need one murder every three years. Same murder rate, but one murder every three years seems a lot safer than 2,245 murders in one year. The population of New Zealand is 4.4 million, just over half the population of New York City, or about the population of the San Francisco metropolitan area. Thus, the number of violent crime in all of the country of New Zealand would be equal to the number of violent crimes in San Francisco for the crime rate to be the same.
The next issue in comparing all of this is that every jurisdiction counts crime differently. For example, rape is a violent crime in the US, but a sexual offense in New Zealand. I tend to think of rape as a violent crime, so I will add those data to those of the violent crime rate for New Zealand. I will then compare the total violent crime rates. Obviously, there are a lot of assumptions here, and I am doing this for fun on a Sunday morning, which means my methods are probably rife with statistical errors, but I think the point and the trend will be obvious and meaningful.
My curiosity on this subject has stemmed from two things. First, I compared safety data for industries in the US and New Zealand, and the results were surprising, but that might be a good topic for another post. Second, there seems to be a lot of violent crime here. A tourist was beaten to death with a bat by a teenager one night in Taupo. A five year old girl was raped and beaten by another teenager in Turangi (population 3,240). These are small places, which means the violent crime rate is going to increased a lot by single incidents. There is also, it seems, a very large problem with domestic violence in this country (as I have previously blogged about). Thus, I have begun to doubt the safety, or supposed low crime rate of this island nation as commonly touted.
In 2000 (the most recent data I found for New Zealand), the total violent crime rate for the US was about 500 per 100,000. For a discussion of what violent crime is in different countries (including the US and New Zealand), the Wikipedia Violent Crime page is pretty good. In New Zealand, the total violent crime rate in 2000 was 567 (obtained by summing crime rates for the following categories; grievous assault, serious assault, other (including homicide), robbery and sexual attacks). If the entire violent crime rate for New Zealand is used (this adds the categories of minor assault and intimidation/threats) the violent crime rate rises to 1,154 per 100,000.
A Lonely Planet guide (I think), described New Zealand as being "relatively safe." My first question here is relative to what? Relative to Detroit (violent crime rate: 1,887/100,000), New Zealand is pretty safe. I doubt anybody really makes their safety decisions based on the safety they would expect in Detroit. Contrast with Honolulu (violent crime rate: 268/100,000), and New Zealand is relatively unsafe. Perhaps, tourism guides should instead say, "New Zealand is about as safe as Philadelphia" (violent crime rate: 1,189/100,000).
In New Zealand, something does happen. That something is violent crime. Can a place be beautiful with a high crime rate? Yes. I enjoy D.C. I am not sure I would want to live there, but that is related to a dearth of mountains, more than the crime rate. Does the violent crime rate make me want to leave New Zealand? No. That said, on the matter of public safety, the nation fails to deliver upon the utopian mythology that the rest of the world has developed for the most isolated nation on the planet, which does not make me particularly want to stay.
Note: To obtain data from charts regarding New Zealand crime statistics I used Data Thief, for US crime data I used visual estimation.
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