Britain is now the crime capital of the West

England and Wales now top the Western world's crime league, according to United Nations research.

The UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute reveals that people in England and Wales experience more crime per head than people in the 17 other developed countries analysed in the survey.

The findings are expected to cause further embarrassment to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who has pledged to have street crime under control by September.

This week, the Home Office will publish its White Paper outlining radical reform of the criminal justice system, in part to curb spiralling street crime and to punish more offenders. Government sources confirmed to the IoS that the reforms will also include empowering judges to tell rape-trial jurors about a defendant's previous convictions.

In the UN study, researchers found that nearly 55 crimes are committed per 100 people in England and Wales compared with an average of 35 per 100 in other industrialised countries.

The UN study analysed Home Office crime statistics for England and Wales and also carried out telephone interviews with victims of crime in the 17 countries surveyed, including the US, Japan, France and Spain.

England and Wales also have the worst record for "very serious" offences, recording 18 such crimes for every 100 inhabitants, followed by Australia with 16.

And "contact crime", defined as robbery, sexual assault and assault with force, was second highest in England and Wales – 3.6 per cent of those surveyed. This compares with 1.9 per cent in the US.

News of the survey comes days after the Government published its long-awaited national crime figures, which showed the first increase in burglaries and thefts for 10 years. A record 108,178 street robberies last year prompted the Metropolitan Police Federation to demand an extra 12,000 officers for London alone. The US, by contrast, has managed to reduce its crime rates, despite its reputation for street robberies and shootings.

Experts say this is the result of a committed policy of ploughing resources into training prisoners, finding them jobs after release and then monitoring them to ensure they do not reoffend.

The Government's reforms are also expected to include similar schemes to those in the US, where prison officers act as "mentors" to inmates both inside prison and on release into the community.

However, the success of these schemes will depend on how much money the Home Secretary receives from the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, in the comprehensive spending review. Last week, Mr Blunkett is understood to have told colleagues that "He [Mr Brown] doesn't like me" after the pair rowed over the Home Secretary's share of the new spending budget.

But government sources say that the Prime Minister has now personally intervened and managed to salvage a better deal for Mr Blunkett.

Harry Fletcher, the assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, said any attempt to curb crime by reforming the criminal justice system would require substantial resources. "The whole package is massively expensive," he said.

Shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin said: "This just shows why it is ridiculously complacent for the Government to claim a respectable record on crime. The fact is, we have a crime crisis in our inner cities and no coherent programme from the Government to tackle it."