ABSTRACT
The global trend towards urban living is a factor behind the rise of crime since city dwellers are statistically far more violent and lawless than their rural counterparts. The homicide rate in Amsterdam is 4.09 per 100,000 people, while the rate for the whole of the Netherlands is 1.4 (Council of Europe 1999). This pattern is much more pronounced in LDCs, where far larger sections of the cities’ populations live in poverty than in wealthy Amsterdam. Poverty, of course, is a key cause of crime and it is in these areas that world population growth is focused.
