Scotland: A country of killers: Second-highest murder
rate in western Europe
Angus Macleod The Times, London
26 September 2005
Ottawa Citizen
LONDON
LONDON - Scotland's reputation for routine violence has been reinforced by a report from the World Health Organization that has found the country has the second-highest murder rate in western Europe.
According to the study, Scots are more than three times as likely to be killed as people living in England and Wales and one-and-a-half times more likely than people living in Northern Ireland. Only Finland has a worse murder rate.
The latest report comes a week after another study, from the United Nations, said Scotland was the most violent country in the developed world.
It stated that more than 2,000 Scots were attacked every week -- almost 10 times the official figure -- and said Scots were three times more likely to be victims of violent assault than people in U.S. cities.
The UN report was criticized by politicians and senior police officers, who raised questions about its methodology, but appears to be supported by the WHO study.
Yesterday, police chiefs, politicians and crime experts agreed that the rising levels of violence in Scotland, fuelled by a lethal culture of drink and drugs, meant that Scottish government policies appeared to be failing.
However, the government pointed out that ministers had recently introduced new measures to combat knife crime, including doubling the penalty for possession of a knife from two to four years, and giving police increased powers to arrest someone on suspicion of carrying a knife. Reforms to Scottish licensing legislation will seek to address the problem of alcohol-fuelled violence.
The WHO study showed that the Scottish murder rate was 2.33 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 0.7 in England and Wales, 1.02 in Spain and 0.96 in Italy.
France and Norway made it into the top three safest places to live, with murder rates of 0.85 and 0.73. Germany had the lowest murder rate on record, of 0.68 per 100,000 people.
Det. Chief Supt. John Carnochan, head of Strathclyde police's violence reduction unit, admitted that a new approach was urgently required because the current systems were not working.
"The west of Scotland suffers in particular from high levels of interpersonal violence involving young men of such intensity that it is virtually unique in western Europe," he said.
Glasgow was recently named as the murder capital of Europe and last year the total number of homicides rose to 83, compared to 70 in 2003.
-----Original Message-----
From: Cordell, Arthur: ECOM
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2005 4:44 PM
To: FUTUREWORK (E-mail)
Subject: minutemen Scotland and violence???So. What is going on in Scotland ???OPINIONTruth and violence | U.N. report undercuts cliches about America
The United Nations might not be the source one might expect for a new report that undermines the common global stereotype of Americans as violent cowboys, but U.N. crime researchers have produced just such evidence.
The report documented that not the United States but Scotland was the world's most violent developed nation. Scotland, England, Wales, Australia and New Zealand all had assault rates at least double America's. New Zealand is the developed world's sex-assault capital. Other data show street robberies are far more common in London than comparably sized New York.
Even America's traditional No. 1 ranking in developed nations' murder rates is no more. A study to be released later this year concludes that, yes, Scotland has passed the gun-slinging Yanks.
This news comes just as two more foreign films that depict Americans as culturally inclined toward sociopathic behavior have been released to critical applause.
In the Canadian film "A History of Violence," a saintly small- town paterfamilias is revealed to be a skilled killer. In the Danish film "Dear Wendy," a troubled young man achieves release and redemption only through what The New York Times describes as "apocalyptic violence." These characters are plainly meant to be fictional stand-ins for America.
How trite. How superficial. You will not be surprised to learn that the "Wendy" in the latter film's title is the name of a gun.
Now, it's easy to dismiss these movies and their ilk as the smug work of America haters, but to a depressing degree, they matter -- and they do real damage. The pop-culture depictions of the United States around the world help form the perceptions of hundreds of millions of people, many of whom think this purported violent streak explains our war in Iraq.
Alas, there's not much Americans can do about it except hope that with time, our foreign critics develop a more sophisticated view than assuming every U.S. president watches John Wayne movies for behavioral clues.
It's possible. Consider French writer Bernhard-Henri Levy, who reveres America as "a model of democracy" and shares the Bush administration's deep anxiety about Islamic extremism. That he is France's most popular intellectual is a startling confirmation that America isn't as despised around the world as we may assume -- and that just as Americans suffer from national stereotyping, we're also guilty of it.
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