And what is going on in France? Their crime rate is much higher than all their neighbors, and in the range of countries like Mexico, Ecuador, Paraguay, etc. Sweden is a surprise too; again, their neighbors score much better.
Getting your phone/purse/whatever nicked in Paris became sort of tradition and part of visit long time ago (for me it was the phone, in museum where they have Napoleon at rest... seriously staff working the lockers just took it from my backpack).
It even leaks into neighboring countries, ie Geneva surrounded by France from 3 sides is the town with highest crime in whole Switzerland. Second highest is Basel, on the border with... you get the pattern.
Wage theft is one of the most common forms of crime in the US, and it's widespread, including wage theft from farm workers.
(Indeed, farm employers may be violating a lot of laws - https://www.epi.org/publication/federal-labor-standards-enfo... .)
Police steal more dollar value from innocent people in the USA than burglars do. This is of course crime but is not counted in normal crime statistics or regarded as violent crime despite police doing this while armed.
As far as I can tell, per capita violent crime is indeed often higher in urban areas than suburban or rural areas, but sometimes the violent crime rate in rural US is higher than the national average.
Quoting a 2018 publication at https://atlantablackstar.com/2018/07/16/rural-red-states-tha... :
> According to Pew Research, violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply in the past 25 years. For the first time in a decade, violent crime in rural areas has surpassed the national average, as the website Governing reported. The reasons for this state of affairs are severalfold: Although all rural areas are not poor, poverty has increased, which has led to an increase in crime. Employment has fallen in the countryside as farming has consolidated and manufacturing jobs have left. Further, the opioid crisis , as well as the methamphetamine epidemic,continue to make their presence known in small towns as a driver of crime. Finally, there are fewer law enforcement resources in the country due to shrinking tax bases, with fewer jail cells, and sheriff’s deputies required to cover significantly larger patrol areas than their urban counterparts. This rural reality provides an opening for criminal activity such as drug dealing to thrive.
Or, Table 7 of https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/docu... states that in 2019 the rate of violent crime in suburban US was higher than that of urban US.
There are regional numbers at https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/252630.pdf?utm_cont... correctly, ("Victimization in Different Types of Areas in the United States: Subnational Findings from the National Crime Victimization Survey, 2010–2015").
In looking at the numbers I think the take-home message is that violent crime is not mostly due to "bad parts of a few cities".
Violent crime rate dropped in urban, suburban, and rural areas.
2021 numbers should be out within a month.
Even local crime statistics are a mess to interpret, extrapolating to the whole world feel suspect.