The Nordic paradise

We're told so often that crime is a function of inequality. That it's the gap between rich and poor that creates the stealing, the robbing and the violence.

If that is true then we would expect to see less crime in places that are more equal and more crime in places that are more unequal.

The usual measure of such inequality is the Gini (index or coefficient, depending how you display it) and, to the great delight of social democrats everywhere the Nordic countries have some of the lowest such measured inequality. The US has one of the highest for a developed nation.

New York City has one of the highest in the US what with Wall Street and all that (just as London does in the UK).

So, if it's inequality that causes the crime then we'd expect there to be more crime in the US, more in NYC, than there is in the Nordics, yes?

So, is that in fact true?

Oslo had the highest rate per person in Scandinavia in terms of reported crimes, with 90 reported crimes per 1,000.

Copenhagen had 50 crimes reported per 1,000 and Stockholm had 79.

In New York, there were 22 reported crimes per 1,000 inhabitants.

This means there were four times as many reported crimes per person in Oslo as in New York.

Oops! Yet another beautiful theory destroyed by an inconvenient fact.

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