Victims poll shows crime down across Europe

BRUSSELS, Feb 6 (Reuters) Crime rates across Europe have dropped sharply over the past decade, according to a survey of 40,000 Europeans asked about their experiences of falling victim to offences ranging from car theft to sexual assault.

Fifteen percent of those interviewed said they had been victim of a common crime in 2004, down from 21 per cent in 1995 when crime across the continent peaked, according to a telephone survey coordinated by research group Gallup.

Ireland and Britain came out on top of the crime scale, with just over 20 percent of interviewees saying they had recently fallen victim to at least one crime, compared to around 10 percent in Spain and Hungary and an EU average of 15 per cent.

The findings released yesterday bore little relation to national police statistics often showing opposite trends, said Gallup, which insisted the use of telephone interviews to prompt people to discuss experiences gave a more reliable picture.

''Collecting statistics on police recorded crimes has not, as in the United States, been harmonised (in the European Union),'' Gallup said, pointing to national variations in whether crime was reported by victims, and how police recorded it.

The survey covered various categories of crime from vehicle theft and burglary, to so-called contact crime such as robbery, sexual assault and common assault.

Reuters SRS VP0438