Governments, academics, and journalists often express an interest in cross-national crime comparisons, particularly between Canada and the United States. This interest stems from the desire to discover causal explanations for crime and to develop more effective criminal justice and social policies (Archer & Gartner 1984; Howard, Newman, Pridemore 2000). Unfortunately, methodological complexities have placed considerable barriers to such comparisons. Differences between national data sources, both for police reported and victimization surveys, have hampered accurate comparisons. Despite these divergent …
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showed last 75 words of 1655 total
…will be inflated, given that 3.7% of attempted murders also involve a robbery.10 This classification difference, however, is negligible when examining its effect on the entire category. The Canadian rate of aggravated assault would be inflated by only 0.1%. Finally, it is important to note that the United States sub-classifies aggravated assault offences according to the weapon used (firearms, knives & cutting instruments, personal weapons, and other weapons). Cross-national comparison on the use of weapons in aggravated assaults