Sharpe's Opinion
Friday, 3rd Jul, 2009
More on that ’77% Increase in Crime’ Figure
Costigan Quist delves deeper into the aforelinked Telegraph story which claimed the UK was the ‘Violent Crime Capital of Europe’.
There’s no perfect measure of crime. The British Crime Survey is almost certainly the best for what it measures, but it doesn’t measure everything, and it isn’t very good at spotting trends in rare crimes.
Reported crime is not only affected by the reporting rate, but also by changes in definitions and procedures. What’s absolutely clear though, is that the Conservative researchers deliberately misled.
He’s right, of course – I ought to have included a disclaimer to the effect that not only should you not believe everything1 you read in the papers, but also the stats came from the Conservative Party and all the usual caveats apply.
But you already knew that, didn’t you?
- Or anything? [↩]
I now wish I had commented at the time. One thing one should always do when looking at lies, damed lies and statistics is do a quick hand-waving assessment of what the stats are trying to allude to. Let’s say that 77% is pretty close to 100% for argument’s sake in this hand-waving analysis.
Is the Telegraph really saying that your chances of being stabbed (say) have doubled in 12 years? I think not.
The reason that nobody believes the government’s stats is because they do not tally with everyday experience. The correct way to deal with that is not to put out some other stats which are even more wildly out of kilter!
Blue Eyes
July 3, 2009 at 10:34 am