(no subject)

[andrewducker]

Never take headlines at face value.

BBC Headline: "Violent Crime figures rise by 12%"

Halfway down the article:

Over half of all crimes now counted as violent do not involve any injury to the victim.

Violent crime such as common assault includes pushing and shoving, with little or no physical injury to the victim.

Many of these offences would not have been recorded under the old recording standard.

And in fact the BCS says that violent crime has fallen by 3%.

There are now 5.3 million fewer victims of crime than in 1995 and the risk of being a victim of burglary is now half that of nine years ago.

So that's ok then?

Comments

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

This is well known: perceptions are that crime is going up, reality is it is going down. Street type/crime against domestic property anyway - not sure about white collar stuff :-) I think myself it's cos every single person who home -owns is now obsessed with the value of their property and sees burglars in every shadow, but the general theory as you no doubt know is that more public drunkenness (inc more female public drunknenness) gives a general perception of more crime.

[whiterabbitt.livejournal.com]

Good news: Violent crime up 12%!

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

I have no faith in the statistics. I am sure they were gathered and analysed perfectly well and provide and exellent measure in a short timescale, but over a longer timescale they are incomperable. The reason is that what is included in each category has been changed so much, on such a regular basis, that comparing them to years past is almost useless.

Example: Three years ago my car was parked in glasgow. The window was smashed in and some CD's and the stereo were taken. I called the police who came and took a few details and issued me with a crime number and a promise to call me if anything was recovered.

Last year my car was broken into again. Same MO, the window was smashed in and a few things were stolen from inside. To be honest I didn't expect the police to do anything about it, but thought it best to report the crime in case there was more damage and it ended up becoming an insurance claim. So I went down to the police station to report it and the officer on the desk took a few details. I asked for the crime number and was told I hadn't reported a crime. It seems this was classed as an "incident". I was informed that if I wished to report it as a crime I would have to come in and wait to give a statement and that I wouldn't be able to move the car until they had examined it, which could take up to 3 days as they were very busy.

Needless to say I declined the offer as I rely on the car for work. No crime was recorded, and as such didn't appear in the crime figures.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

There was an interesting statistic that turned up on the intranet at work. Apparently elderly people are the demographic most afraid of violent crime, but are nowhere near the most likely to be victims...