Well there are some things that as a nation, you just don’t want to lead the World in and one of those things is number of crimes committed on an annual basis.  The U.S. repeatedly finds itself at the top of that list.  Unfortunately, we lead the World in many kinds of criminal activities. This is partially driven by the sheer number of people we have in the U.S., but given just how much distance there is between the U.S. and the rest of the World there must be more to it than that. Let’s focus on the top 10 most concerning facts about crime in the U.S.  Many of these may come as a surprise to you although based on how many people are impacted by crimes every year in the U.S., you may not be surprised in the slightest.

1. The United States has nearly 12 million crimes committed every year.  This is the most in the World with the runner-up having only 6 million crimes.  That’s two times worse than the runner-up nation!
2. The United States currently is holding over 2 million prisoners.  This means that we have the highest percentage of prisoners relative to our population in the World.  Combine this with #1 and you can see we have a lot of minor criminal offenses and a lot of people on probation and parole.
3. Almost 100,000 rapes occur in the United States every year.  This is also the highest number for all countries in the United Nations.
4. There are nearly 500,000 robberies in the United States every year, this is the second highest number for all countries in the United Nations.
5. There are approximately 1,000,000 police officers in the United States (the highest in the World).
6. There are over 16,000 murders in the United States every year (this is second worst in the World).
7. There are over 1.2 million car thefts every year in the United States (this is the highest in the World).
8. One out of every five people will be a victim of a crime every year in the United States again this is the worst in the World.
9. Even with the worst crime rates in the World, 82% of the U.S. population feels safe walking the streets at night and this is the 2nd best rate in the World.  Isn’t that interesting?
10. The software piracy rate is 20% in the United States.  This is the LOWEST in the World out of 107 countries in the survey!

As you can see, the United States is in an ominous position.  We have a monumental task ahead of us to control criminal activity and improve on several of these numbers.  The best way we can see to do that is to have more people aware of these problems and to encourage them to pursue criminal justice careers and to support our law enforcement officers in general.  Let’s hope that in the next decade we see ourselves falling behind other nations in terms of criminal activities because that is just one category we don’t want to be number one in any longer.