any statisticians want to shed some light on the way these data were interpreted. I'm wondering who they surveyed and in what types of areas to get the results they did!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10645702

Crime figures…………..Lima, Oscar, Bravo

Mark Easton is very good at covering both the core statistics and the media/political abuse of crime statistics on his BBC blog.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2009/07/map_of_the_week_recession_cuts.html

^ this is last years release

search for more of his entires manually. Unfortunately he doest tag them properly.

the police have introduced a raft of diversions to avoid convicting on low level offences thus artificially bringing the figures down .most town centre police staions have closed in favour of bigger staions on the edge of towns thus " cutting down " town centre assaults [ or at least people bothering to report them ]
crimes against the person -robbery , sexual assault and assaults have risen consistently over the last 10 years , are you reassured ?

ermmmm……..

Anyone actualy read the article? (Aimed at Mr Potatohead mainly)

The survey asks people about crimes commited against them in the last year. It does not involve the police recording crimes. Thus includes crimes not reported to the police.

Can those of you claiming the statistics to be misleading/wrong bring any evidence to suppourt your arguments? Just becasue you/someone you know was burgled, does not mean the whole country has gone to the dogs, as a statistical sample, they might be the only burglarly in the country!

maybe they are true?

ive not been robbed, assaulted or anything else in the last year

maybe you just watch too much crimewatch/deadliest police videos/ watch sky news etc

if crime actually did go down what would make you believe that it had?

p.s. these statisics are compiled by civil servants, not politicians.

p.p.s. politicians would have a vested interest in this years statistics being the highest on record for 2 reasons. 1) they can blame it on the last government, 2) makes for nice reading next year when we can take responsibility for reducing crime.

Just remember a while back there was a statistic that said 20% of roads deaths involved alcohol – so the other 80% were sober then

School boy logic says ban all sober drivers and road deaths will fall by 80%

Moral of this point statistic can be made to infer anything you like, assuming of course you capture the information in the first place

Living in a city centre, it doesn't feel like the crime rate has fallen

It doesn't feel like its fallen, but has anything happened to you in the last year? Or is the daily mail telling you that each under18 in a hoodie that you pass is about to mugg you, so you file the event in the mental copartment 'near misses' and therefore believe that you are risking life and limb every day?

I wouldn't say that the statistics are wrong but I don't trust them fully like the media do because there is often more than one way to interpret statistical data!

People instinctively distrust statistics, and maybe rightly so, but for something like this what else is there? IMO it's pretty well established that the fear of crime isn't directly connected to the actual incidence of crime.

Crime stats are always a tricky one- you make it easier to report a crime and "crimes go up" and vice versa. If you just unplugged the 999 service for a day reported crimes would drop like a stone! And then of course there's changes in the law, how many times did we hear "Despite new gun laws gun crime is on the rise!", then you look a the numbers and realise that the reason gun crime rose was because there were lots of new gun crimes.

http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs10/crimestats-userguide.pdf

I was surveyed for the BCS a month ago. It was actually very interesting.

Most of the questions the interviewer asks personally, stuff about whether you've been burgled etc etc and they also catch interesting detail about your home security etc.

There's then an anonymous section where the interviewer hands over the laptop and you self-complete, about your drug use, whether you've been sexually abused or assaulted by a family member etc.

He said that, because they need to capture what's happening to kids as well, he was doing these interviews with illiterate 10-year olds using audio equipment and all-sorts. It's also done by postcode (they survey people within each postcode) and they are incredibly persistent – the guy who caught me did so at his forth attempt, so they aren't just asking people who happen to be home.

In a touching gesture, I was given 12 first class stamps for my trouble.

The BCS may not be a big enough sample to give an absolutely accurate picture (I'm not a statistician) but it does go into huge detail with the people who are actually surveyed, I had absolute confidence that it was anonymous and the questions were extremely clear – you weren't being asked to comment on anything that you wouldn't be sure what answer you ought to be giving, and it doesn't allow for re-classification of anything.

Overall, it was very interesting, and gave me a lot of confidence that it's a very good indication of what's going on.

British crime survey – reliable rigorous and valid set of statistics.

Sample size is big for accuracy. tens of thousands – think how accurate political polls are with a sample size of a thousand

Its nothing to do with police recording of crime – its real peoples experiences of real crime – reported or not.

Look at the murder figures – impossible to fudge and a big clear drop.

Its little to do with crime policies tho – its all about rising affluence. I expect crime to rise now as the effects of the recession become evident.

The newspapers have created a climate of fear of crime as a political tool – the fear of crime is immense now an totally out of kilter with the actual real experience.

In my (worthless) opinion, who cares whether crime rates are rising or falling…there has always been 'crime', there probably always will be. Surely the important things to discuss and address are;

Why do people commit crime? (i.e. the root cause, such as poverty as TJ's alluded to)

Should all the 'criminal' acts that people are being convicted of actually be illegal? (e.g. if we all get convicted of trespass for riding 'cheeky' trails the crime rate goes up, but should it even be a 'crime' in the first place?)

Isn't trespass a civil offence?

I wouldn't say that the statistics are wrong but I don't trust them fully like the media do because there is often more than one way to interpret statistical data!

And yet something tells me that you would probably "trust them fully" if the statistics showed that the crime rate had increased.

Personally I am surprised at the apparent fall in crime rate in recent years. Crime rates do not go significantly up or down for no reason at all – there is always an underlining reason.

And I don't believe I've yet heard a convincing explanation for the changes in crime rates. It is obviously important and useful to know the reasons. Otherwise gathering the information seems fairly pointless to me.

.

"I expect crime to rise now as the effects of the recession become evident."

According to the link :

In 2009-10, crimes committed fell to 9.6 million – 9% below the previous year, indicating that the recession has not caused an increase in offences

So not only did crime not increase, but it fell by a significant amount.

Was speaking to an police inspector the other day. She was complaining that they in the past if someone got pulled for for being, say, drunk they'd just have a word in the shell-like, maybe a night in the cells and they'd be on their way. Now they are being forced to do them for something so it looks like they've 'solved' a crime and hit targets.

It's all manipulation. More 'crime' being solved blah blah blah.

BigDummy – Member

because they need to capture what's happening to kids as well, he was doing these interviews with illiterate 10-year olds using audio equipment and all-sorts.

It's also done by postcode (they survey people within each postcode) and they are incredibly persistent – the guy who caught me did so at his forth attempt, so they aren't just asking people who happen to be home.

Not according to my newspaper !

Quote :

"If, on the other hand, it sounds like a girlie student in a sash and brandishing a bulldog-clip board, standing on a street corner and asking passers-by if they can spare a minute or two, that would in my view be nearer the mark.

Stripped of all its flim-flam, the British Crime Survey is about as informative – for one thing, no one under the age of 16 allowed to give evidence, so that loses a whole stratum of new-type knife victims – as a questionnaire on your favourite shampoo."

The British Crime Survey? It's all lies, damned lies and crime figures

Who am I to believe BigDummy ……………you, or the Daily Mail ?

Gus, I've met bd and I wouldn't trust him further than could throw Michael Howard!

@CaptJohn yes think so, my bad…was just grasping for an example most people could relate to.

Who am I to believe BigDummy?

I haven't checked up on what the bloke told me I'm afraid, and it may be that what he was doing was for next year's survey. The Daily Mail may be correct, but as its readers would simply hate it is crime really had gone down… 🙂

Oh, and on who they're surveying. As I understand it, households are chosen at random within each postcode, and the chap then tries really hard to get those people. I got a letter saying they wanted to survey me, hoped I'd be in but doubted it, and eventually the bloke happened to ring on the doorbell when I was there. But his mission was to talk to me, not to someone who was around.

any statisticians want to shed some light on the way these data were interpreted. I'm wondering who they surveyed and in what types of areas to get the results they did!

A mate spent some time collecting some crime stats for in house use (he works at a crime reduction partnership or whatever they're called this week). What Rich Hall said about the people who get surveyed being the people who are too dumb to swerve a bloke with a clipboard in a shopping centre is very true.

Most memorably, he asked about crime that people felt weren't being tackled. One response was "They aren't doing enough about animal cruelty, they do people for not looking after their dogs properly, but what about fishing? It's disgusting, it's so cruel. I was in WH Smiths the other day and there was a fishing magazine, and the man on the front was holding up a dead fish, it's not right."

These are the kind of people who respond to surveys.

When I went to the Hampshire Constabulary recruitment centre in 2007 we were given a talk at the start…

'Are the police to do with crime prevention and resolution? Well, that's one of the areas we're interested in…'

'One of the areas we're interested in?' Should be the main focus, surely?!

yes crime has gone down in both the official measures I would hazard a guess that crime has gone down then.
It is possible that all the redistributive measures the labour governemnt undertook [and heavy sentencing] actually reduced crime…or perhaps cheaper drugs mean fewer crimes?
I am sure we will see how well a small state and big society works in this respect.
universe?

It is possible that all the redistributive measures the labour governemnt undertook [and heavy sentencing] actually reduced crime

Well it is certainly true there was a redistribution of wealth under the Blair-Brown-Mandelson Axis……… the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, but I can't see why that would have necessarily contributed to a fall in crime rate.

And just how much correlation there is between sentencing and crime levels is doubted by even the Tories now.

Maybe it's other stuff like people being more security aware ?

The divide between rich and poor is greater after 13 years of Labour rule than at any time since the Second World War, according to the Government’s own report into inequality.

Or it could be that the chavscum discovered that Adidas trackie bottoms and McKenzie hoodies don't keep you warm and so stopped at home on the XBox a lot more during our coldest winter for forty years. Less chavscum wandering the streets = less crime. Simples.

That Daily Mail story looks pretty misleading. Some extracts:

If, on the other hand, it sounds like a girlie student in a sash and brandishing a bulldog-clip board, standing on a street corner and asking passers-by if they can spare a minute or two, that would in my view be nearer the mark.

So, it is an opinion piece. Moreover, later in the piece the 'journalist' explains the people sampled are chosen by address, not sampling in the street (btw people doing surveys on the high street are looking for particular types of people to ensure they get a representative sample).

Stripped of all its flim-flam, the British Crime Survey is about as informative – for one thing, no one under the age of 16 allowed to give evidence, so that loses a whole stratum of new-type knife victims – as a questionnaire on your favourite shampoo.

From the BCS FAQs:

Since January 2009, the BCS has been extended to children aged 10 to 15 to gain a
more complete picture of crime in England and Wales. Not all households with children
will be asked to take part in the under-16s survey. If your child is selected to take part in
the survey the interviewer will outline what topics will be covered and seek the written
consent of parents.

Dail Mail again:

Addresses of interviewees, we're told, are drawn at random from post office lists.
Which means that if you live in a crime-free area, you're going to give crime-free replies.

The survey is of crime which the interviewee has been a victim of in the last year, not crime the interviewee thinks have happened in their area. But, using the DM's logic you can switch it around and say if the address is in an area experiencing a crime spree you'll get crime-ful (sic) replies. But that fails foul of the ecological fallacy, and is a further reason why the DM assertion is incorrect.

Furthermore, what the BCS does is random stratified sampling – a robust method of getting a representative and unbiased sample.

But that's how statistics are born. And meanwhile the altogether different police figures, based on whatever they have managed to dig out of their hectares of paperwork, are – how shall I put this? – altogether different.

Of course they are different, they are measuring different things – recorded crime vs experienced crime.

And we are among sceptics. Chris Huhne, LibDem home affairs shadow, put it this way: 'The public has lost faith in the crime figures. The Government tells them crime is falling but a rising number of people think it is getting worse.'

That's because reported crime is different to perception of crime (and different again to crime you have experienced).