A fascinating paper: "Why Crime Rates Are Falling Throughout the Western World" by Michael Tonry
"Crime rates have moved in parallel in Western societies since the late Mid-dle Ages. Homicide rates declined from 20 to 100 per 100,000 population inwestern Europe to one per 100,000 in most Western countries by the be-ginning of the twentieth century. Crime rates in major cities and in coun-tries fell from the early nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth.From the 1960s to the 1990s, rates for violent and property crimes rose inall wealthy Western countries. Since then, rates in all have fallen precipi-tately for homicide, burglary, auto theft, and other property crimes. Thepatterns appear in both police and victimization data. Rates for nonlethal vi-olence have fallen sharply in the English-speaking countries and parts ofcontinental Europe. In other parts of Europe, nonlethal violence has beenstable or increasing, but the data are probably wrong. Interacting changes inrates of reporting and recording and in cultural thresholds of tolerance ofviolence that occurred earlier in the English-speakingcountries are the like-liest explanation for the appearance of crime rate increases. Diverse explana-tions have been offered for both the long- and short-term declines. Mostagree that, whatever the explanations may be, they do not include direct effects of changes in policing or sanctioning policies"
https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1521&context=faculty_articles
"Crime rates have moved in parallel in Western societies since the late Mid-dle Ages. Homicide rates declined from 20 to 100 per 100,000 population inwestern Europe to one per 100,000 in most Western countries by the be-ginning of the twentieth century. Crime rates in major cities and in coun-tries fell from the early nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth.From the 1960s to the 1990s, rates for violent and property crimes rose inall wealthy Western countries. Since then, rates in all have fallen precipi-tately for homicide, burglary, auto theft, and other property crimes. Thepatterns appear in both police and victimization data. Rates for nonlethal vi-olence have fallen sharply in the English-speaking countries and parts ofcontinental Europe. In other parts of Europe, nonlethal violence has beenstable or increasing, but the data are probably wrong. Interacting changes inrates of reporting and recording and in cultural thresholds of tolerance ofviolence that occurred earlier in the English-speakingcountries are the like-liest explanation for the appearance of crime rate increases. Diverse explana-tions have been offered for both the long- and short-term declines. Mostagree that, whatever the explanations may be, they do not include direct effects of changes in policing or sanctioning policies"
https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1521&context=faculty_articles