PEOPLE in England are more than twice as likely to be mugged as their American counterparts, according to an official study. Research by the US Department of Justice shows that while America has managed to cut the most serious crimes of violence, the rate in England and Wales has risen sharply.

The study, based on police data and surveys of thousands of victims, will embarrass the government as it comes after a damaging row over sentencing policies.

It shows that robbery rates have soared so that mugging is now 2.3 times more prevalent in England than in America. Assault is also twice as common here.

Americans are now just four times more likely to be murdered than people in England, compared with nine times in the early 1980s. Rape is twice as likely there, compared with 17 times in 1981.

The research, regarded as among the most authoritative and conducted for the US government in England by a Cambridge University criminologist, updates a four-year-old study that compared conviction rates and length of sentence.

Both England and America have managed to bring down rates of assault, burglary and vehicle theft, although people in England are still twice as likely to have their cars stolen and are 60% more likely to be burgled.

Robbery, which excluded snatch thefts of phones or purses and was defined as involving some form of violence, has however increased in England while falling sharply in America.

Experts disagree about what has led to America’s improved crime rate, but some experts cite longer sentences, a stronger economy and tougher policing in cities such as New York and Chicago.

In Britain the zero tolerance policies of these American cities where all crimes, however minor, are pursued have been tested with some success, most notably by Ray Mallon, the former Middlesbrough police chief who is now its mayor.

David Green, director of the think tank Civitas, said America had kept crime down by keeping criminals off the streets longer.

“What they’re doing is catching more people, convicting more of the ones they catch and administering worthwhile punishments,” he said.

Latest figures show robbers served an average of 18 months longer in prison in the US than in Britain. American burglars and car thieves were jailed for twice as long.

Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, said the lesson from America was clear: prison works. “My suggestion to David Blunkett is build more prisons. My advice to (Lord Chief Justice) Woolf is to start sending out the message that the courts will not accept that it’s normal to be mugged in the street or to be burgled.”

Frank Zimring, a law professor at the University of Berkeley, California, who wrote a book that compared US crime rates with those in England in the early 1990s, said higher conviction rates, longer sentences and a police crackdown on quality of life crimes in cities may have had an effect on crime rates — but high employment had also played a part.

“If you could set an alarm clock you could get a job in America in the 1990s,” he said. “But it doesn’t work continuously because we’ve had periods of enormous prosperity when the crime rate has gone through the roof.”

Jan Berry, chairman of the Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, said Britain’s justice system paid solicitors to prevaricate. “In America, if you commit an offence you go to court the next morning,” she said. “In this country that’s unlikely. If justice is easy and fair, it actually acts as a deterrent as well.”

A Home Office spokesman said: “You have to apply policies to the unique situation in our country. You can’t just lift things wholesale from one country when different factors come into play.”

The government’s “street crime initiative”, which targeted robberies in the 10 worst-affected police districts, has only led to a decrease in some of the areas.

However, according to the Home Office, that has not yet been reflected in annual figures that show robberies increased by 13% in the year to last September.

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