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Analysis reveals crime trends

Posted November. 27, 2000 14:16,   

한국어

In Korea, an analysis has revealed that every 61 seconds a major felony occurs, such as homicide, burglary, rape, larceny and assault.

Frequency of crime:

The National Police Agency (NPA) announced the result of its analysis of the reports of felony crimes throughout the nation from January to October as reported through the Compstat System -- an advanced crime tracking technology system, which has been installed in 2,912 police stations and requires the police station to log in the details of crimes within 24 hours of occurrence.

According to the analysis, homicide occurred every 9 hours, 4 minutes; burglary every 1 hour, 36 minutes; rape every 1 hour, 17 minutes; larceny every 5 minutes, 5 seconds; and assault 1 minute, 35 seconds.

In comparison to 1996, the frequency of homicide increased with time lapse between homicides decreasing by 12 hours, 45 minutes; for burglary 1 hour, 34 minutes; for rape 17 minutes; for larceny 4 minutes, 25 seconds; and for assault 1 minute, 7 seconds.

The total number of crimes this year through October was 1,426,69 cases, 3.4% increase from the same period last year¡¯s 1,379,634. However, the arrest rate fell 6.9% from last year and recorded 88.5 % (last year 95.4%).

Perpetration time:

The analysis of the time of perpetration revealed that acts of assault occurred mostly from 7 p.m. to midnight, while burglary and larceny occurred mostly from midnight to 4 a.m. or around 8 a.m. when the head of the household leaves for work or on the weekends when the families go out. Homicide and rape were mostly spread out during a given day without time differentiation.

"Although the larceny usually occurred in the middle of the night in the past, the trend has shifted recently to the daytimes, when the housewife is alone or the residence empty due to both the husband and the wife having jobs," head of the investigative department of the NPA Jung Kyung-Jae said. "With the recent economic crisis, rape and larceny have been rising steeply, and all people need to be on increased alert."

Comparison with other developed nations:

Per 100,000 people, the occurrence of homicide was 1.7, burglary 9.7, assault 592.1 in Korea. In comparison to the United States (7.4 for homicide, 202.4 for burglary and 388.2 for assault) and Britain (2.75 for homicide, 128.51 for burglary and 17.4 for assault), the homicide and burglary rates were below the U.S. and British rates, while assaults greatly surpassed the two developed nations.

The frequency per crime in the United States last year was 31 minutes for homicide, 1 minute for burglary, 6 minutes for rape, and 4 minutes for larceny.

In comparison with Japan (homicide 1.1, burglary 2.17 and assault 15.3), Korea surpassed Japan in all three types of crime.

"As every country has different sets of standards for felony cases, a direct comparison has limitations," Jung said. "However, overall assessment comparison reveals that although Korea has less homicide and burglary, it has much greater number of assaults. In case of foreign countries, there are more premeditated acts of violence, while in Korea many of the acts of violence were spontaneous. It seems as though the 'hurry hurry!' attitude of the Korean people has added to the spontaneous acts of violence."

Similar to the crime analysis models in other developed nations such as the United States and Japan, the NPA revealed its plan to develop a crime model through the in-depth analysis of the time and area of the occurrences of criminal activities and assign numerical values for various cases such as the level of the possibility to become a victim of crime when walking alone in the city at night.



Huh Moon-Myung angelhuh@donga.com