Crime, Punishment, Firearms
The Institute for Economics and Peace, a global think tank headquartered in Sydney, Australia, produces an annual Global Peace Index (GPI), ranking the safest and most peaceful countries in the world. For 2023, the GPI measured 163 countries using twenty-three different indicators, such as internal and external violent conflicts, level of distrust, political instability, potential for terrorist acts, number of homicides, and military expenditures as percentage of GDP. The United States ranked 129th and has fallen in ranking every year since 2016. The Trump years, the Big Lie, the January 6th insurrection--certainly all these added to the low ranking; so too, did the mass murders, the gun violence, and the internal violence.
Ranking as the safest countries were Iceland, New Zealand, Ireland, Denmark, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic.
In the United States, there seemed to be no end of gun violence. By August 2023, there had been 421 mass murders recorded in the United States, a record pace, along with at least 25,198 persons (118 each day) killed in non-mass murder situation. More than half of those 25,198 used a gun to commit suicide. Of those who died, 879 were teenagers and 170 were children. These figures also include 488 persons killed in police officer-involved shootings, and thirty-four officers killed in the line of duty.
Sources: The Institute for Economics and Peace describes itself as "an independent, non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to shifting the world's focus to peace as a positive, achievable and tangible measure of human wellbeing and progress." https://www.economicsandpeace.org; Safest Countries in the World, 2023, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/safest-countries-in-the-world. Kiara Alfonseca, “More than 25,000 People Killed in Gun Violence So Far in 2023,” ABC News, August 3, 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/US/116-people-died-gun-violence-day-us-year/story?id=97382759, citing data from the Gun Violence Archive. The Gun Violence Archive defines “mass shooting” as “four or more victims shot or killed.”
When looking at high-income countries with populations of 10 million or more, the United States ranks number 1 in firearm homicides. Firearm homicide rate is 13 times greater in the United States than in France; 22 times greater than in all the countries of the European Union, and 23 times greater than in Australia, according to data collected by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. In an earlier 2018 Global Burden of Disease study, the United States ranked eighth out of 64 high-income countries and territories for homicides by firearms. Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, both US territories, ranked first and third on the list of 64 countries and territories.
In the United States, most homicides are caused by guns. In 2022, some 85 percent of all homicides in America were caused by firearms; but in Canada, it was only 40 percent; in Australia, just 11 percent; and England and Wales, only 4 percent.
Sources: Leach-Kemon and Sirull, “On Gun Violence, the US is an Outlier.” “Global Mortality from Firearms, 1990-2016,” JAMA, 2018, 320 (8): 792-814, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2698492;“How Many US Mass Shooting Have There Been in the 2023? BBC News, August 26, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081; Statistics Canada and CDC 2021; ONS (England and Wales), April 2021-March 2022; Australian Institute of Criminology, July 2021-June 2022.
The United States is one of just three countries in the world that have the right to bear arms as a constitutional protection. The other two are Mexico and Guatemala. Further, the United States is the only country with a right to keep and bear arms with no constitutional restrictions. At one time, six other countries (Bolivia, Costa Rica, Colombia, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Liberia) had a constitutional right to bear arms, but they have all repealed those guarantees.
Source: Zachary Elkins, “Rewrite the Second Amendment,” New York Times, April 4, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/opinion/rewrite-the-second-amendment.html?ref=opinion
Of the twenty most dangerous cities in the world in 2023, as measured by murder rate, the top six are all in Mexico. Celaya, Mexico, tops the list, with a murder rate of 109.39 per 100,000 residents. The seventh most dangerous city is St. Louis, Missouri, which has a murder rate of 87.43. Baltimore ranks sixteenth, with a murder rate of 56.45. All the other most dangerous cities are in Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Jamaica, or South Africa. These rankings do not include situations of war or conflict. For the OECD member countries, the average murder rate is 4.50 per 100,000. No European or Asian city ranks in the top fifty of the world’s deadliest cities.
Source: “Ranking of the Most Dangerous Cities in the World in 2023, by Murder Rate per 100,000 Inhabitants,” Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/243797/ranking-of-the-most-dangerous-cities-in-the-world-by-murder-rate-per-capita/
When looking at violence against women, we find that the United States is one of the worst countries in the twenty-seven OECD countries that have reported such information. These data look at the percentage of women who have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner in 2020. Only women in Turkey experienced a higher percentage of violence than women in the United States.
Source: “Violence Against Women,” OECD, https://www.oecd.org/gender/vaw.htm
Amnesty International reports that altogether, 108 countries had completely abolished the death penalty by the end of 2021; a total of 144 countries have abolished it in practice (that is, no executions in the past ten years). Fifty-five countries, including the United States, retain the death penalty. At the end of 2021, there are, however, some 28,670 persons who have been sentenced to death. Iraq has the highest number, around 8,000; the United States has 2,382 persons on death row.
Source: “Death Penalty 2021: Facts and Figure,” Amnesty International, May 24, 2022, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/05/death-penalty-2021-facts-and-figures/.
The Prison Policy Initiative looked at the US incarceration rates and compared them to the founding NATO countries. Again, the United States can claim Number One status. The incarceration rate in the United States is 664 prisoners per 100,000 population. Next highest among NATO countries is the United Kingdom with 129 per 100,000, followed by Portugal (111 prisoners) and Canada (104).
Source: www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2021.html
As of October 2021, the World Prison Population List estimated that approximately 10.35 million persons were incarcerated worldwide; by far the greatest number, 2.3 million, were imprisoned in the United States. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, nearly every state in America has a higher incarceration rate than any other country in the entire world. Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in America, at 1,094 persons per 100,000 citizens; it is followed closely by Mississippi with 1,031.
Source: Emily Widra and Tiana Herring, “States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2021,” Prison Policy Initiative, September 2021, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2021.html