Hello - I need CURRENT (years 2002+) statistics on the following:
1.  number of crimes committed in U.S. (types of crimes)
2.  Number of instances where attacks could have been prevented
through self-defense
3.  Trend in crime
4.  Demographics of crime victims
5.  any statistics on self-defense and its effectivness

I also need valid sources for these.  I've had plenty of websites that
offer statistics...but without a source and I cannot use these1 
Thanks so much!

Instructors of self defence generally claim attack type crimes could
have been prevented if the victum had increasesed self defense skills.
Typical police reports however do not support, nor refute, this idea.
In most attacks a minor change in conditions would have resulted in a
different, occasionally better outcome for the victum, but which and
how many is guess work.
 Clearly a criminal skilled in martial arts is likely to ecalate the
violence delivered by the victum leading to a worse outcome for the
victum, in addition to the loss of some property which might otherwise
been the only harm to the victum.
 At least occasionally a person skilled in self defence will wrongly
conclude they are being attacked when the other persons involved had
no such intentions. Often the police report does not attempt to
identify who started the violence.   Neil

Might be hard to find the statistics.  I think good solid Martial Arts
training can reduce attacks, but not for the reason you may be
thinking of!  My experience has been that most of the people with
solid martial arts training desire to AVOID violence and fights.  They
feel comfortable in themselves and don't feel they have to "prove"
anything and thus are more willing to walk away or find a non-violent
means.  Also in their training they have been hit and know it hurts!

An effective self defence class should include as the number one topic
how to NOT get in trouble in the first place.  What to look out for
(areas, traffic flow, surroundings, etc.) so you can avoid the
encounter.  (or at least reduce probablility of having one.)  If one
can avoid the situation that is a 100 times better than "trying to
fight it out".  In addition, even if you have a lot of training and
are a "lethal killing machine" then do you really want to use it?  Now
you have the legal problem of "deadly force"; what do you do if you
have effectively subdued the attacker and now you are arrested for
killing or seriosly injuring the attacker?  Better to avoid the whole
thing!

Will get back to you with other details


In 2002, U.S. residents age 12 or older experienced approximately 23
million crimes, according to findings from the National Crime
Victimization Survey.
-- 76% (17.5 million) were property crimes 

-- 23% (5.3 million) were crimes of violence 

-- 1% were personal thefts. 


In 2002 for every 1,000 persons age 12 or older, there occurred

--1 rape or sexual assault 
--1 assault with injury 
--2 robberies 

Murders were the least frequent violent victimization -- about 6
murder victims per 100,000 persons in 2001.

This will give you the details  

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_02/pdf/2sectiontwo.pdf


Of this Adobe document 

Page 3 gives trend in crime.

Page 15 onwards you get detailed table wise categorization of the
crime and the victims  based on race,sex, age and other factors.

This link below gives the Crime index.Need MS-Excel to view that file.

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_02/xl/02tbl01.xls

This link below gives detail description of what

http://www.rainn.org/ncvs_2002.pdf
http://www.rainn.org/2003facts.pdf

This data is compiled by department of Justice. 

Hope these help

birkett7,

Based on 35+ years in the martial arts, 15 years in the miltary, 6+
years as a private investigator, and in all of that, having to
physically defend myself twice, I would suggest you expand the
conventional definition fo "self-defense" to include situation
awareness.

If situational awareness skills are developed, then one can avoid
attacks by not being there.  This concept is promoted in reputable
martial arts schools, regardless of style.  There was a psycological
study done a number of years ago, I think at University of Cincinatti,
that indicated that higher ranked martial artists were significantly
LESS likely to experience physical attack, and this was, in part,
attributed to their situational awareness skills.  ANother factor was
their level of self-confidence.  Possessing self-confidence when
confronted is not what the attacker expects and creates a cognitive
dissonance.  The net result may well be that the attacker withdraws or
never actually confronts because the target "isn't right".

In these instances, there would be no crime statistic because there
was no crime - it was stopped before it began.

Short war story:  two female teenagers had just left a department
store and were waiting at a bus stop near an alleyway.  An individual
came out of the alley, flashed a knife, and ordered them into the
alley.  Neither had ever experienced this sort of thing, thought it
was a joke, and laughed at him.  He was unable to deal with this, and
left.  My analysis is that they did not respond like victims and so he
left.  In this case it turned out OK.

Situation awareness is a state of mind.  You can acquire it, with
training and persistence, without going through the martial arts
training.  It does NOT, however, guarantee to work in all instances. 
It is my contention that the martial arts training will be valuable on
those occasions where you cannot avoid confrontation.

....Probably more than you ever wanted to know about this...

Regards,
SW