Comparative Analysis of Crime Trends in Major Cities around the World Choi, Insub* 1. Background and Method   Almost all the spheres of everyday life in Korean society have become more and more internationalized and globalized. And criminal justice in Korea has been no exception to this trend. This means that it has increasingly been important to know crime trends in foreign countries, not to mention domestic trends in crime occurrence and criminal justice area.   Further, with knowledge on national crime trends of many countries, attention also need to be paid to crime trends in major cities around the world. That is, it is quite necessary to look, objectively and internationally, at the crime situations in Korea by comparing, for example, crime rates in Seoul (Korea's capital city) and Pusan (Korea's second largest city) with those in major cities in many other countries.   Also, as municipalism has become more popular, development of municipal crime policies has gains more importance. So, the data on crime situation at city's level provides utmost important elements in developing and enforcing differential crime policies for each municipal unit(city). Nevertheless, not much efforts have been made to secure and analyze crime data at city level and compare them across the cities. Research in this area has also been quite rare.   Given such situation, this study attempts to conduct a comparative analysis of crime trends of major type among several nations and their major cities to see how crime trends in Korea fare with those of other countries and cities. In doing so, several kinds of crime prescribed in the Criminal Law in Korea are selected and compared with their counterparts over time, mostly based on their crime rates (that is, the number of cases per 100,000 inhabitants) as long as data are available.   However, difficulties inherent in every comparative study are also encountered here. Countries (and cities) under study have their own legal definition and prescription of the type and nature of crimes which are different from country to country. This obviously makes it very difficult, though not entirely impossible, to rigidly compare crime rates and their trends of one country with those of other countries and to do further comparisons among nations.   Therefore, in this study, it has been decided that, mostly based on the type and nature of crime defined and prescribed in Korean Criminal Law, crime rates and their trends in other countries are reexamined and then recompiled when necessary so that comparison would make as much sense as possible by making every effort to match one type of crime in Korea with that of other country, for example. Yet many cavities are still present and seem to be, to some extent, unavoidable. Several types of crime chosen and examined for comparison following Korean prescription of criminal law are as follows (English expression may not be exact as we would want): violent crime such as murder, robbery, rape, battery and assault, and bodily injury, and property crime such as theft, fraud, and embezzlement. 2. Summary of Major Findings   Although detailed findings and related discussions are included in the final report, a few of major findings mostly on total crime rates and city crime rates for several types can be listed as follows:   - Overall, total crime rate of Korea, over the time period under study (since 1964), has remained at less than 2,000 cases per 100,000 inhabitants and that of Japan had been so until the year 2001 when more than 2,000 cases began to be recorded. And that of the United States had shown an overall increasing trend since 1960 with peaks of 1980(5,950 cases) and 1991(5,898 cases) until 1991, when decreasing trend has been quite obvious. That of Germany has also shown an overall increasing trend since 1971, while that of England has much ups and downs still showing increasing trend. It is found that especially since 1990s all the nations except the United States have shown a steadily increasing trend.   - In the case of murder, while the rate of New York has shown a remarkably decreasing trend since 1990s, those of Seoul, Tokyo and Berlin have not shown any particularly increasing or decreasing trend. The highest rate has been that of the New York, followed by Berlin, Seoul, and Tokyo(Seoul and Tokyo roughly at the similar level).   - When it comes to robbery rate, there have been much differences among major cities: The robbery rate of Seoul and Tokyo has been increasing since 1997, whereas that of New York and Berlin has been decreasing with London of rather increasing trend. In the year 2002, for example, the highest rate was that of London(577.1 cases), followed by New York(336.8 cases), Berlin(261 cases), Seoul(20.7 cases), and Tokyo(8.5 cases). However, in the year 1992, the highest rate was that of New York(1,237 cases) and the next was that of London(342 cases). Over the period, the most decrease was recorded in New York.   - The rape rates have shown trends rather similar to that of robbery among major cities: that is, increasing trends have been recorded both in Seoul (very clearly) and Tokyo (with small increment), while New York has seen a continuously decreasing trend and Berlin still decreasing trend with some ups in late 1990s and early 2000s. In the year 2002, the highest rate was recorded for Berlin(46.8 cases), followed by Seoul(24.1 cases), New York(20.9 cases), and Tokyo(2.2 cases). But in the year 1992, that of New York was 38.2 cases, much higher than that of Seoul (10.1 cases).   - When it comes to arson rates, Seoul and Tokyo have remained at less than 3 cases and Berlin has recorded at around 50 cases. Before 1990s, arson rates had been higher in Tokyo than in Seoul, but recently the situation has been reversed: Seoul at around 3 cases and Tokyo at around 2 cases. Berlin has had ups and downs and has recently shown a decreasing trend.     - When we look at the theft rates, Seoul has recently shown much increase in spite of overall decreasing trend, while New York and Berlin have shown continuously declining trend since 1990s. London, without much ups and downs, had decreased and again increased. For the year 2004, the highest rate was recorded in Berlin(6,692 cases), followed by London(5,612 cases), New York(1,790 cases), and Seoul(355 cases).    In the case of fraud, the rate has dramatically increased since 1990s in Seoul. And the rate of Berlin has also shown a continuously increasing trend since 1990s. But Seoul has still shown an increasing trend in quite recent years while Berlin has had a rather decreasing trend quite recently. For the year 2004, the fraud rate of Berlin was 2,257 cases and that of Seoul was 615 cases.   In all, it is found that crime rates in Seoul (and Pusan) have generally been much lower in most of crime types with partial exception of Tokyo (and Osaka) than those in major foreign cities under study. It is strongly suggested that more efforts should be made to make the city of Seoul and Pusan much safer and more competitive than any other cities within the nation as well as across the world.