@H2O MAN,
It's always interesting to see how they compare with the actual statistics
You can't just compare the "violent crime" statistics. You have to look at what each country includes in those statistics
The US has a violent crime rate of 466 per 100,000 persons but a burglary rate of 723 per person. This is a perfect example of the misuse of statistics to compare UK's crime rate to the US violent crime rate.
The US statistic for larceny alone is 2,178 per 100,000 people so there is more larceny per 100,000 person in the US than there is entire crime in the UK.
The US rate for property crime is 3,264 per 100,000 persons.
That means the US crime rate is over 6,000 crimes per 100,000 persons compared to the UK's 2,034. The US crime rate is at least 3 times the UK crime rate if the 2,034 is really TOTAL crime in the UK.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_01.html