ABSTRACT

This chapter is divided into four parts. The first part provides a context for the consideration of American violence with a series of international comparisons. The second part presents a sustained analysis of robbery, an offense that combines elements of theft and violence and that result in thousands of homicides each year in the United States. The third part discusses the degree to which public fear, usually thinks of as fear of all sorts of crime, is more narrowly focused on the threat of lethal violence. The last part addresses the errors of policy analysis that are likely when crime and violence are regarded as interchangeable categories. Los Angeles is the second largest city in the United States with a 1992 population estimated at 3.6 million for its crime statistics reporting unit. The crime statistics for Sydney report the offense under two headings: breaking and entering a dwelling and breaking and entering a building that is not a dwelling.