[Mike Irwin]

Reported on CBS news just a few minutes ago...

States that you're far more likely to be mugged or have your home burglarized in Britain than in the United States, and the gap between murders, rapes, and other violent crimes is closing quickly.

Just another nail in the coffin of the "a gun-free society is a safe, crime-free society" mantra...

[Blackhawk]

Never fear.

Agricola will come along shortly and explain that it's not true since none of the studies know how things in Britain truly are since he's not been asked. They're not really crimes in Britain because Parliament has decreed that Brits really want to help the downtrodden who really need to support themselves in that manner. :D :rolleyes:

[Mike Irwin]

What is this, now?

4 or 5 separate studies in the past year or two that have all shown that crime in Britain is increasing at a frightening clip?

Getting harder and harder to keep denying it...

[El Tejon]

Mike, oh, yeah, watch this: there is no crime in Ingerland. Continue with your footie.

[agricola]

all,

i) the number of reported burglaries is falling, and has been for the last decade along with the rest of the world.

ii) theres evidence that the number of reported robberies is falling and that 2001-2 may well have been the peak year, for reasons (especially in London) which have already been stated on TFL about a hundred times. To christen THR with them, they are:

a) mobile phones - easy to steal and resell and new models come out every three months (6% of all crime involves a mobile phone and between 35%-40% of all street crime has mobile phones as the sole property taken); and,

b) the withdrawl of large numbers of Police from the boroughs to perform antiterrorist duties in the wake of 9/11.

iii) the number of rapes and other more violent offences is still lower in the UK than in the US. Crime (at least over here) remains cyclical, and fyi this peak of criminal activity remains, in almost every category, lower than the last peak in the early 1990's. No doubt the usual suspects will return and decry "well, the home office fudges its stats!". In that case, please explain why the post-1998 and 2002 counting rule changes have lowered the figure by including more crimes, and why the other study of national criminal trends, the BCS, has shown a year-on-year decline in the number of offences, both reported and unreported.

but, i guess it would be better to misrepresent and confuse the arguments! theres no crime in england! or in the CCW areas!

[Blackhawk]

And as predicted, agricola comes through again! :rolleyes:

[agricola]

blackhawk,

why even bother posting? the facts speak for themselves, and i fail to see how a media which this community seems to rubbish at every turn for inaccuracy, liberal bias and general ignorance of the 2A issue suddenly turns into the mother of all journal of records whenever they, even slightly, agree with you. at least have some consistency :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :scrutiny:

[Mike Irwin]

Can't find any reference to the study on CBS' website, so for the time being I'll file this under "interesting but unverified."

[Blackhawk]

Actually, ag, since Cambridge University is in your backyard, I thought you'd like to enlighten us about the study.

But I guess it'll have to wait for another day when we can all actually get at it, presuming that day will come.

[ZekeLuvs1911]

Agricola? What's an Agricola? Sounds like a soft drink to me. :D

[Difranco]

why even bother posting? the facts speak for themselves, and i fail to see how a media which this community seems to rubbish at every turn for inaccuracy, liberal bias and general ignorance of the 2A issue suddenly turns into the mother of all journal of records whenever they, even slightly, agree with you. at least have some consistency

Agricola could you please state your sources for your statistics/facts.

I've read in the last few months off and on in the Washingon Post, and other periodicals that crime in the UK and Australia is up.


I have found these on CBS website
Guns as fashion (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/07/uttm/main535489.shtml)

Gun Crime up in Britian (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/09/world/main323773.shtml)

Crime sweeps Great Britain (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/06/27/world/main210074.shtml)

London Plagued by Crime (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/07/18/world/main216323.shtml)

At other outlets
Gun crime soars (http://uktop100.reuters.com/latest/Home_Office/top10/default.asp)

Liza Minelli TOO! (http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/000608.html)

It's got so bad the UK government has registered a domain to help fight crime! (http://www.crimereduction.gov.uk/)

This is just a sampling.

[agricola]

difranco,

please go back to TFL, all the data is there already

[Selfdfenz]

Agricola is the latin word for farmer.
S-

Thanks to the low incidence in crime in GB they have birthed the Mother of All DNA Databases. But wait...that doesn't make sense..

The Brits will very likely be the first country to require universal DNA testing at birth. As far as I know, no other nation has yet done so. But it will be a quick draw contest between GB and the US (given the WOT/TIA) to see which police authority/state gets there first.


S-

[Difranco]

difranco,
please go back to TFL, all the data is there already


New thread / New Website / New Forum. Please provide source links please, otherwise your arguments are misguided at best and intellectually dishonest at worse. I provided source material for the view that started this thread, by direct linking, why can't you provide links to source material for your position/view? I should not have to research your view for you.

Just trying to keep things honest.

[jimpeel]

6% of all crime involves a mobile phone and between 35%-40% of all street crime has mobile phones as the sole property takenYour acceptance of the thefts of phones as somehow acceptable and less offensive than any other crime is disheartening. These phones are stolen in violent muggings and you think that this is acceptable and doesn't really constitute violent crime. Do you believe that the perps simply come up and say "Nice phone. Wish I had one like it. Can I have that one?" and the victim says "Sure. Take it. It's yours."?

Here are some bulleted facts from the London Telegraph posted in a story entitled "A boy with a phone is more at risk than a pensioner" (Filed: 08/05/2001)

Mobile muggings

UP to one third of all street robbery involves mobile phone theft, with an estimated 15,000 mobiles stolen every month.
In London, 19,302 mobile phones were reported stolen on the streets in 2000 - five times the level of 1997.
Figures in one London borough - Hounslow - show 70 per cent of muggings, many of them for mobile phones, are committed by the under-17s. Seventy two per cent of their victims are also under 17.
In Edinburgh, around 53 per cent of phone theft victims are young people. Lothian and Borders Police recently launched a campaign to security-mark mobiles with postcodes.
Around 4.5 million mobiles were sold last Christmas. The bulk of sales to children were pre-paid "pay as you talk" mobiles, which have no registered user.
The Home Office is currently in talks with the industry to make it much more difficult to use stolen phones. Just as car stereos have been "personalised", mobile technology could make it impossible to swap microchips from one phone to another.


Also from the story:Boys and young men are more at risk of being victims of violent crime than any other sector of the population, with those aged between 16 and 24 running a 20.1 per cent risk of being attacked, compared with 9.1 per cent of women of the same age. The men have a 4.3 per cent risk of being robbed, compared with a 1.4 per cent risk for young women. No figures on the under-16s have been collected by the British Crime Survey, but anecdotal evidence suggests that similar percentages for boys and girls apply.



Some of the recent headlines from the London Telegraph:

29 December 2000: Call to improve mobile phone security to curb child muggers
18 July 2000: Muggings add to first rise in crime for seven years
26 June 2000: Crime figures show violence soaring
23 June 2000: Crime and Punishment: Where to move away from the burglars
16 June 2000: London police numbers drop to 20-year low
2 April 2000: Police shortages leave 999 calls unanswered
17 March 2000: Drop in police figures weakens new Crime Bill
29 February 2000: Crime on streets of London doubles
17 February 2000: Downing Street hosts drugs summit as crime figures soar
15 February 2000: More cash needed to cut crime, say police
19 January 2000: Robbery up 19pc in first crime rise for six years

[jimpeel]

Note how the Home Office attempts to cook the books with the rise not being as substantial as thought so the rise isn't actually a rise.

Sex attacks, burglaries and car thefts all rise
By John Steele
(Filed: 10/01/2003)

House burglaries are rising after nearly a decade in which police have driven down break-ins, according to the latest crime figures.

Violent attacks, sexual offences and thefts of cars and their contents are also all increasing. Only robberies have shown a drop, as a result of large anti-mugging operations by big city police forces.

Overall, the Home Office figures show that crime recorded by police rose by 9.3 per cent in the year to September last year, compared with the same period in 2001 - from 5.3 million offences to nearly 5.8 million. Domestic break-ins rose by 7.9 per cent, from 414,000 to 443,000.

Violence against the person showed a year-on-year increase of 19 per cent; sexual offences rose by 18.2 per cent and thefts of and from vehicles went up by 3.5 per cent. The year-on-year figure for robberies showed a 14.5 per cent rise.

The Metropolitan Police and nine other forces have devoted huge resources since last spring to driving down muggings. From July to September last year robberies showed an eight per cent reduction compared with the same quarter in 2001.

The quarterly comparisons, though, suggest even sharper rises in some crimes than the annual figures. Violence against the person rose by 28 per cent and sexual offences went up by 25 per cent. The overall rise in crime, comparing the two quarters in 2001 and 2002 is 8.8 per cent.

The Home Office and Agricola argues that the apparently substantial rises are inflated by the effect of new recording practices and do not necessarily show underlying increases in crime.

When the new figures are "adjusted" to a form which the Home Office says can be matched to figures calculated under the previous methods, burglary is seen to rise by five per cent, not 7.9 per cent.

The year-on-year rise in overall crime can be "adjusted" down from 9.3 per cent to two per cent and the violence figure from a 19 per cent rise to no change. Adjustments to the quarterly comparisons reduce the 28 per cent rise in violence to no change and an 8.8 per cent overall rise to a fall of one per cent. The Government also released figures from the British Crime Survey, in which the public is asked about its experience of crime in the year to last September.

The BCS data, which the Home Office claimed to be "the most reliable indicator of crime trends" suggests a seven per cent drop in crime compared with the previous year.

Ministers yesterday latched on to the lower, adjusted figures, and the BCS data, to claim that crime remained "stable" and the chances of being a victim were still the lowest in more than 20 years.

The BCS shows that the public suffered 12.2 million crimes last year, compared with 13.2 million in the previous year.

Other recorded crime figures show drug offences rising by 12.3 per cent, with no adjusted figures available, and a one per cent rise in the number of homicides to 858 in England and Wales.

A third of people in the BCS regarded "teenagers hanging around" and anti-social behaviour such as littering and vandalism as a very or fairly big problem.

[jimpeel]

Gun crime claims 30 victims every day
By John Steele, Crime Correspondent, and George Jones
(Filed: 10/01/2003)


Crimes involving firearms increased by 35 per cent last year to record levels, with nearly 30 incidents every day, according to new Home Office figures for recorded crime.

In nearly a quarter of the total of 9,974 offences, a rise from 7,362 in the previous year, guns were fired. Gun killings rose sharply.

The figures were condemned as "truly terrible" by Oliver Letwin, Conservative home affairs spokesman.

Gun crime has more than doubled since Labour came to power in 1997. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, will today hold talks with police chiefs, community representatives, customs and immigration officials and crown prosecutors on ways to combat the growing use of guns by criminals.

The latest figures, which do not include air weapons, are heavily dominated by the use of handguns, either fired or used to threaten in nearly 60 per cent of cases.

Handguns were outlawed by the Government in the year after the Dunblane massacre in 1996, but the number of crimes involving handguns has more than doubled since the ban, from 2,636 in 1997-1998 to 5,871 last year.

Injuries inflicted by handguns also more than doubled, from 317 in 1997/1998 to 648 last year.

The increased use of handguns bears out criticism that the ban took weapons out of the hands of law-abiding shooting club members rather than criminals and had no impact on gun crime.

The number of firearms homicides has more than doubled since 1998-1999, while non-firearms killings rose by only 21 per cent.

The total number of gun killings in 2001-2002 was 97, an increase of 32 per cent - or 23 deaths - on the previous year. The vast majority of cases involved young men in inner city areas.

In 1977 there were 413 homicides, of which only 28 were gun-related. Last year, the 97 compared to 832 homicides overall last year, a significant increase in the proportion of killings caused by firearms.

Firearms were increasingly used in robberies, including muggings, last year. Firearms robberies leapt by a third between 2001 and 2002 and accounted for more than half of all firearms offences.

Gun violence was heavily concentrated in a small number of big city police forces, particularly the Metropolitan, Greater Manchester and West Midlands areas.

Each has suffered substantial amounts of "black-on-black" gun crime.

In the Met, gun crime leapt year on year from 2,817 incidents to 4,192; in Greater Manchester from 964 to 1,361; and in the West Midlands, where two girls were shot at a party last week, from 887 to 1,298.

Gun crime has continued to be a problem throughout 2002, though forces devoted considerable resources to fighting it.

John Denham, the Home Office Minister, said the Government was "concerned" over the significant rise in firearm offences. Efforts would now be targeted on such offences, with a new five-year minimum sentence for possession of a firearm as well as tougher laws on air weapons and replica guns.

Mr Letwin accused the Government of responding to a massive increase in gun crime and robbery with a series of gimmicks and initiatives and confused signals on sentences for burglary.

He said the increase in firearms was drug related. "The problem won't be solved until the gangs are broken up and the streets reclaimed for the honest citizen by proper neighbourhood policing." Iain Duncan Smith, the Conservative leader, said the growth of a gangs and guns culture had left some inner city areas almost "lawless".

Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust and a serving policeman, said gun crime was now out of control. He said: "Never have officers been so powerless to combat crime. We have been shackled by political correctness, red tape and bureaucracy and act more like secretaries or social workers."

[Blackhawk]

Agricola? What's an Agricola? Sounds like a soft drink to me. Agricola is a Brit whose address is in Britain but who spends almost all of his time in De Nial. He's like a pet spider (and that's NOT a pejorative, Runt!) in that he's intelligent, sometimes amusing and very predictable.

If you need to sharpen your debating skills so you can recognize logical fallacies, changing the subject, co-opting positions, and misquoting what was said, he's a valuable opponent.

AFAIK, he's never recanted a position, which is what you'd expect from a true believer, and that's what makes him worth reading. Of course, he'll be much more valuable if he can ever extricate himself from that stinkin' river he spends most of his time in.... :D

[agricola]

difranco,

please, this is a TFL successor site and those threads are still there at TFL. if you have visited that site, you'd know that the data is spread over four or five major threads, and i have not the time to dig them all out for you - you'll have to do that yourself

jimpeel,

i) the Daily Telegraph is one of the conservative papers in the UK, along with the Mail, Express, Times and the Sun. Using data from there (in effect from one source) is going to be fraught with bias: you can already see that in the "gun crime claims 30 victims a day", when in fact the article suggests nothing of the kind.

ii) if you get the actual statistics, and remove the two categories affected by the counting rule changes, one finds that the 40% increase in fact becomes a slight (1 or 2%) decrease. I will say this now, as I said on TFL - there will be a rise in the number of assaults reported in the 2002-2003 set of statistics. This is because HMG now require a crime report to be created for any incident of suspected assault, whether or not one has actually taken place (eg: brothers play-fighting now gets a crime report).

iii) even the most politically minded statistician cannot state with any degree of certainty that a 32% rise, due to 23 incidents, is statistically significant. Such sudden rises or falls of such a low sample are almost always due to unusual conditions within the area sampled - in this case the ongoing disputes over control of the crack-cocaine markets within London and the other metropolis.

iv) in any case, 4192 incidents where a gun or imitation gun has been part of the offence in a whole year is a remarkably low figure for one of the three great cities of the world and one with a population of seven million people.

v) i wasnt condoning mobile phone theft, despite your obvious wishes. I was trying to illustrate that there was no problem of mobile phone theft in the past, largely because there was no mobile phones - once a new element enters the crime scene, like mobiles, and especially where the companies responsible outright refuse to take even minimal anti-theft measures, one must expect that these items are going to have an effect on the crime statistics.

[Difranco]

Agricola,
I understand and know the whole TFL story, and lurked there for a long time.

You dont have time to look up and verify all the numbers and data you just posted to Jimpeel? Yet, you have it all committed to memory?

Memories are fallliable and without supporting source material, thereby making all of your data and arguments in fact null. While at the same time you say the source material that others have provided are "Conservative Bias" and are effectively "one source" without providing 'ANY' sources of your own is like the kettle calling the pot black.

Your arguments and data are nothing more than some cooked up dilusion without source material.

[Blackhawk]

... the Daily Telegraph is one of the conservative papers in the UK, along with the Mail, Express, Times and the Sun. Using data from there (in effect from one source) .... This is classic agricola. He names FIVE (5) sources and says they're "in effect one source", presumably because they're "conservative" papers. That illogic escapes even me, and I enjoy ag's sputterings!

By extension, that would mean that the U.S. has but two "sources", those being the liberal papers and the conservative papers. Never mind that of the thousands of papers in the U.S., there are but a handful that call themselves liberal or conservative.

The key apparently is that if one of them espouses or prints something you don't like, you can use aggie's rule and brand them with the label you don't like.

Like I said, pet spiders are intelligent... weird maybe, but clever.... :D

[Blackhawk]

Difranco,

The "go look on TFL" ploy agricola uses has a long historical basis in political yammering. Who's going to do it? Almost nobody. Therefore, the ploy allows the gross misuse and misrepresentation of statistics, statements, etc., because they won't be verified.

If somebody DOES go hunt them down to challenge the schemer, the retort is "those aren't the ones I was referring to."

It's a clever way to avoid responsibility or accountability for the truth of "factoids" presented as truth when they're nothing more than vapor.

Good manners and practice require that any referenced material be cited, but clever debaters resort to the "phantom facts" trick.

Another manifestation of the same ploy ag uses is saying "as I've pointed out on other threads, which you can look up...." You can't look them up, because the "facts" relied on don't exist.

Agricola is, however, tolerated because he's a great sparring partner. If you can't beat him, you need more practice. On that score, you're doing very well! :D

[agricola]

blackhawk / difranco,

all of jimpeels articles come from one source - the Daily Telegraph, hence the "one source" comment :rolleyes:

the reason i dont provide all the facts is because these debates happen regularly every week or so, and i dont have the time to create a generic reply to a thread that mentions it all. difranco, if you had lurked during the TFL debates then you already know the facts and where they are; could it be that your refusal to look at them explains the rest of your post, as well as your willingness to believe headlines when even the articles themselves directly contradict them.

[Wildalaska]

Well heres some more to chew on, eh mates..


We often hear that the U.S. murder rate, which is so much greater than anywhere else in the Western World, proves that America is a very dangerous place to live. Yet there are many indications that the murder rate in America is anomalous and does not provide a good argument that America is more dangerous than anywhere else. This can perhaps be illustrated best by looking at the crime figures recorded last year by the police forces of New York City and London, England. The two cities are about the same size, and both racially mixed, providing a good basis for direct comparison.

London New York
Crime Number of Crimes Rate / 100,000 Population
Number of Crimes Rate / 100,000 Population
Ratio
London : NYC
Murder 189 2.5
584 7.3
0.3:1
Rape 2,762 37
2,018 25
1.5:1
Robbery 40,630 549
27,116 339
1.6:1
Assault 42,513 574
20,686 259
2.2:1
Burglary 116,048 1,568
31,226 390
4:1
Auto Theft 60,389 816
26,364 330
2.5:1

Source: Metropolitan Police monthly crime figures by borough; NYPD annual Compstat figures

There are some comparability issues. The figures for assault represent the sum of Grievous Bodily Harm and Actual Bodily Harm in London, and Felonious Assault in New York which includes threats with a weapon that do not result in harm to the victim. The figure for Auto Theft represents “Taking/Theft of a Motor Vehicle” in London and Grand Larceny Auto in New York (I am unsure whether all categories of motor vehicle are included in the New York figure). Nevertheless, the figures are comparable enough for us to draw certain conclusions.

The first relates to property crime. It is clear that a Londoner is much more likely to be a victim of serious property crime than a New Yorker. It was not always this way. In the ‘80s, the English burglary rate was considerably lower than the American. At that time, both countries locked up burglars at about the same rate. Since then, however, the English incarceration rate has quartered, while the American rate has increased slightly. There seems to be a significant correlation between the two trends.

It has now reached the stage where the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, who is responsible for setting judicial sentencing policy, has ordered that first-time burglars should not be sentenced to custody as long as they are low-risk. This has led, in the first few weeks of the new policy, to some odd decisions. Two examples are a burglar who had been arrested in connection with seven burglaries <I>not</I> being sentenced to jail and another multiple-time offender being released back into the community on the grounds that he had recently taken up writing poetry (although doggerel would be a better description, to judge from published examples of his work).

Moreover, even as judges reduce the value to the community of catching a burglar, the Metropolitan Police in London have announced that they will no longer bother investigating crimes that are unlikely to be “solvable.” In other words, as long as a burglar wears gloves and a ski mask to avoid leaving fingerprints or hair samples behind, he can be confident that the police will not bother to try to catch him. It is no wonder that the London burglary rate is four times that of New York.

As for violent crime, this seems again to be a result of different judicial and policing choices. Incarceration for violent crimes in Britain has declined since the ‘80s even as the violent crime rate rose (it has since stabilized). In New York, the “broken windows” approach instituted by former New York Police Commissioner William Bratton demands constant personal attention by police officers to happenings in the community. In London, the decision was taken to withdraw police officers and rely instead on Closed Circuit Television cameras (CCTV) to provide constant surveillance. Unfortunately for the London approach, studies have shown that CCTV does little to deter crime (in some areas, it has even increased) and that even better street lighting has more effect.

The result is that, despite having similar budgets, the Met Police has some 12,000 fewer active police officers than the NYPD. A few years ago, the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority estimated that London was about 3,000 officers below the minimum necessary to police the city effectively. The Met also suffers from a significant shortage of officers from ethnic minorities, leading in many areas to an alienation of the force from the community it is supposed to be serving. The description of the force by a senior judge investigating a bungled investigation into a racist murder as “institutionally racist,” a description the force enthusiastically accepted, has also not helped community relations.

So London is left with an undermanned police force, distrusted by the people and an ineffective deterrent to street crime. It is quite possible that London’s robbery and assault figures would have been much worse had it not been for a central government-ordered crackdown on such crimes, the Street Crimes Initiative, which began in mid-year. The level of resources devoted to that initiative are not sustainable in the long run.

So that brings us back to the headline figure, the murder rate, which is indeed still much worse in New York City than in London. Many suggest guns as the reason that the American murder rate is so much greater than the UK’s. The difference in murder rates has held true for over a hundred years, going back to when the gun laws in both countries were virtually identical. Americans have always been more likely to murder each other than the British, whatever the state of weapons availability.

It is probable that the difference truly lies in the nature of the criminal subcultures. As Eli Lehrer, a crime expert at the American Enterprise Institute said after he investigated the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports, “the most likely person to kill you is your fellow drug dealer.” The cutthroat nature of the American criminal underworld and the relatively less competitive nature of the British equivalent is probably to blame for much of the difference between the two countries’ murder rates. There seems, however, to be evidence that the difference is narrowing.

For the average non-criminal, the evidence is clear. You are much more likely to be raped, robbed, assaulted, burglarized or have your vehicle stolen in London than in New York City. Trumpeting the murder rate in headlines masks this simple truth.


WildimsafeinalaskaAlaska

[jimpeel]

This is classic agricola. He names FIVE (5) sources and says they're "in effect one source", presumably because they're "conservative" papers. That illogic escapes even me, and I enjoy ag's sputterings! This is the "Little tailor" defense. The Little Tailor smacked seven flies with a single blow and then embroidered "Seven with one blow" on his apron. The King mistaked the saying as being "Seven (giants) with one blow" and sent him out to kill the local giant. They made a Mickey Mouse cartoon out of it.

Well, what we have now is "Five with one blow" which removes all five of these sources from the realm of credibility in one fell swoop. Pretty clever, eh?

So here are some articles from the far left Guardian newspaper. Note that this unbiased source supports his contentions which gives rise to the question "Where does Agricola glean his arguments?" From left wing newspapers because all of those right wing newspapers are just too biased.

Sorry for the "single source" posting, all.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theissues/article/0,6512,240896,00.html

The crime figures

Patrick Barkham explains what conclusions can be drawn from today's new statistics

Reported crime figures 1998/99 (pdf format)
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/hosb100.pdf

Tuesday January 18, 2000

Since 1918, recorded crime has increased on average by 5.1% each year. 500,000 crimes were recorded in 1950, rising to 2.5m in 1980 and more than 5m in 1999. But it is hard to know how accurately crime figures reflect the true picture of crime in Britain. It is made all the harder by the vastly different interpretations which can be spun from the same figures by opposing politicians.

What are the crime figures out today?

The crime figures published today cover crimes recorded by the police in the 12 months to September 1999. They are compiled by part of the home office's research, development and statistics directorate, from figures returned by the 43 police forces across England and Wales.

How have they changed?

In the 12 months ending September 1999, police in England and Wales recorded a total of 5.23m offences - an increase of 2.2% compared with the previous 12 months. Violent crime saw its largest rise - 6.3% - since 1995-96, from 624,500 the previous year to 663,000. Robberies were up by 19%.

Are the figures accurate?

It is impossible to calculate the real level of crime in any country. The two main methods available in Britain are offences recorded by the police and crimes calculated by the British Crime Survey. Police figures are based on crimes reported to them and crimes they uncover in their investigations. These are influenced by changing patterns of reporting crime. For instance, the increase in domestic violence recorded by the police in recent years is believed to be due to women's greater readiness to report such offences by their partners.

The 1998 British Crime Survey interviewed 15,000 adults. It can measure crimes unreported to the police, but is based on households and subject to the usual sampling inaccuracies of any opinion poll.

How has the way crime figures are calculated changed?

In April 1998, the Labour government changed the way annual crime figures are calculated. This has appeared to "increase" crime.

The main change is an attempt to better record crime as it affects the victims, which will bring police crime figures into line with "victim" studies, such as the British Crime Survey. For example, if a vandal breaks into five cars in a car park it is now treated as five crimes because five motorists are affected, whereas before it was viewed as a single offence because it was perpetrated by a single criminal on a single occasion.

The home office says that the main impact of the changes is on reported cases of fraud and criminal damage. Before April 1998, credit card fraud was recorded only if reported. Now, if a police investigation reveals fraud it is officially noted. Minor cases of criminal damage, valued at under £20, are also now recorded.

The classification of crime has also been changed. The category of "violence against the person" has been broadened to include crimes such as cruelty to or neglect of children. In the 12 months ending September 1998, 240,779 offences were calculated under the old rules; when the category was broadened, 524,929 offences were recorded over the same 12 months, a 118% increase.

The new system of counting crime revealed 5.11m offences for the year ending April 1999. Under the old system, 4.48m offences would have been calculated over the same period.

Has this change affected today's figures?

No. Today's figures are important because they are the second set of crime statistics compiled using the new calculations. This means that the 1998 and 1999 figures, calculated the same way, can be meaningfully compared. The 2.2% rise, from 5.11m to 5.23m has not been distorted by any changes in the categories.

What will the impact of today's figures be?

Today's statistics are more detailed than in the past and are broken down by police force. As the government stresses, crime fell in 24 of the 43 police areas. But with crime rising overall, this means there were big increases in some areas. These were predominantly urban areas, such as London and the West Midlands, which suggests recorded crime is becoming concentrated in Britain's cities.

Why is recorded crime rising?

Home office criminologists published projections in late 1999 anticipating that Britain was on the brink of a sharp rise in burglary and other offences. This was partly because of increased personal consumer spending and partly because of an increase in the numbers of men aged under 24, who commit most offences.

The main interpretation drawn by Conservative critics, such as shadow home secretary Ann Widdecombe, is that the number of violent offences is up because of the decline in police "stop and search" tactics after the Stephen Lawrence inquiry report, which was part of a debate suggesting such searches unfairly targeted the black community.

Such critics can use the figures broken down by police force to support their case. They point to the Metropolitan police, which recorded a 9% increase in crime - 80,000 more offences - in the 12 months to September 1999.

Use of stop-and-search in London has fallen from 337,309 incidents in 1997-98 to 296,072 in 1998-99. But the link between that and the rising crime figures is hard to prove: it can only be suggested.

What conclusions can be drawn from crime figures?

Almost any you want, on the evidence of the spinning of rival politicians. Clearly, the crime figures are most useful as an indication of broad trends, such as the fact that the vast majority of crime is against property. But you can fairly safely assume that Britain has not got 5.1% more dangerous with every passing year.

Useful links

Crime figures rise for first time in six years
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,123963,00.html

Reported crime figures 1998/99 (pdf format)
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/hosb100.pdf

The British Crime Survey (pdf format)
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/hosb2198.pdf

[jimpeel]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,308663,00.html

What really causes crime

Thursday March 18, 1999
The Guardian

The crime game has nothing to do with policing in the way in which the public normally understand it. It has little to do with reality at all. It is a means of pretending to win the war against crime, which allows criminals to escape unpunished and the victims of crime to be cheated of justice.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,423298,00.html
Sharp rise in violence mars figures

Recorded crime in England and Wales fell by just 0.2% in the 12 months to March 2000, it was revealed yesterday in the last set of official figures to be published before an expected May general election.

Although the continuing fall in general crime levels was marred by the well-trailed 21% rise in robberies (including muggings) the overall reduction in crime enabled the home secretary, Jack Straw, to claim that Labour would go into the campaign boasting that overall crime had fallen by 7% since Labour came to power in 1997.

That assertion is backed up by the more authoritative British Crime Survey which asks people about their experience as victims. It estimates that overall crime fell by about 10% between 1997 and the end of 1999.

But the 8% rise in violent crime continues to prove a political embarrassment to the government's record on law and order. The latest police crime figures show that although violent crime continues to make up only 13% of all offences it is this type of crime that most alarms the public.

Violence against the person - the largest category covered by violent crime - which includes a wide range of attacks, from minor assault to murder, rose by 7% to 589,000 offences. The vast majority of these , around 557,000, were less seriousattacks such as harassment and common assault.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,523904,00.html
Police crime detection rates fall to new low

The police detection rate (NOTE: This is the rate for solved crimes) for all recorded crimes has fallen to an all time low of only 24%, according to Home Office figures published today. While the annual police recorded crime figures show that the clear-up rate for burglary has fallen to the lowest ever level of only 12%, the statistics also show a worrying four point decline in detection rates for violent offences in the past year.

Overall, the crime figures show that the volume of recorded offences fell by 2.5% in the year to March 2001 to 5.2m offences, with the sharpest falls taking place in the burglary and car crime figures. These gains, however, were offset by a rise in violent crime for the third year in a row, but the rate of increase at 4.3% is slowing down when compared with the alarming 16% rise in the year 1999-00.

The Home Office said the fall in police detection rates from 34% in 1989 to only 24% (NOTE: 34% is not that enviable of a statistic, either.) in the last financial year was partly explained by the exclusion from the statistics of secondary clear-ups, such as criminals admitting to other offences during prison visits by the police.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,753935,00.html
Abrupt end to six-year fall in crime

The sustained drop in the crime rate in England and Wales over the past six years appears to be over, with a 2% rise in the annual police recorded figures published today, including the first increases in burglaries and thefts for 10 years.
The simultaneous publication of the results of the more reliable British Crime Survey, which estimates crime to have fallen by 2%, led the Home Office and Agricola to report that "crime appears to have been stable over the last year, following a period of consistent decline". The crime rate fell by more than [b]33% over the past six years.

The British Crime Survey, based on interviews with 33,000 people, estimates that there were 13m crimes in 2001-02. The total number of crimes recorded by the police was 5.5m.

The official police figures confirm the 27% increase in robbery in the year to March 2002 which triggered the high-profile government anti-street robbery campaign. They show that half of all robberies take place in 20 local council areas - 14 of them inner London boroughs - with the worst figures in the most deprived areas and the more affluent areas that border them.

The recorded crime figures also show that police detection rates remain at an all-time low of 24%. The detection rate has fallen from 35% in 1988.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,2763,422984,00.html

Figures show increase in violent crime

Special report: policing crime See the full crime figures
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/crime/

Violent crime and street robberies rose sharply again last year for the ninth time in 10 years, according to recorded crime statistics for England and Wales released by the Home Office today.
The Home Office confirmed that, although overall crime fell slightly, by 0.2%, in the 12 months to September 2000, there was a worrying rise in assaults and muggings.

Overall violent crime rose by 8%, with robbery rising by 21%, but the violent crime rise is half that of the year before, when it was 16%.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,871791,00.html

Rising gun use masks overall fall in offences

The shocking 35% increase in gun offences masks a more optimistic picture for England with the overall crime rate levelling off in the last 12 months after five years of continuous falls, according to both sets of official data published yesterday. Gun crime at 9,900 offences forms less than 0.3% of the overall crime rate.
The police figures published yesterday show that total recorded crime rose to 5.7 million offences, a headline increase of 9%. But Home Office statisticians said yesterday most of this was accounted for by changes in police recording practices and it should be seen as a small annual rise of 2%.

The second set of figures, however - the more authoritative British Crime Survey which measures people's experience of crime - shows a 7% drop in all crime to the year ending September 2002.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,260491,00.html

Crime still falling but at slower rate

Home office's new counting method boosts headline tally but is aimed at producing better statistics and reflecting the number of victims

Download the full crime report from the Home Office
Home Office Crime Statistics

Alan Travis, Home Affairs Editor
Wednesday October 13, 1999
The Guardian

Recorded crime in England and Wales has fallen by 1.4% to 4.5m offences a year, and includes the first reduction in violent crime seen for many years, according to home office figures published yesterday.
The reduction in the underlying trend in the crime figures recorded by the police is masked by the introduction of new counting rules that attempt to give a more accurate picture and increase the coverage of the official crime statistics. The effect of the change is to add around 600,000 offences, and to increase the headline figure by 14% to 5.1m offences recorded in the year to March 1999.

The new counting method tries to reflect more accurately the number of victims of crime; it also for the first time dis closes that 112,576 people were convicted of possessing illegal drugs during the year, dispelling the idea that cannabis has been effectively decriminalised.

Now this is interesting. This is an article from Friday February 23, 2001

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,441750,00.html
England and Wales top crime league

England and Wales have one of the worst crime records in the industrialised world - even worse than America - according to the findings of an official survey published yesterday which compares the experience of victims across 17 countries.
The study, coordinated by the Dutch ministry of justice, shows England and Wales at the top of the world league with Australia as the countries where you are most likely to become a victim of crime. These countries face an annual rate of 58 crimes for every 100 inhabitants.

Yet we have this just eight months later. Agricola's police force must be some kinda crime fighting force.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,581227,00.html

Largest fall in crime for 20 years

The crime rate in England and Wales fell by 12% last year, with the chance of becoming a victim now the lowest for more than 20 years, according to the authoritative 2001 British Crime Survey which was published yesterday.
Home Office researchers said the figures, which show crime has fallen in England and Wales by a third over the past five years, represented a "historic departure" from the underlying trend of a 5% average annual rise over the past century.

Perhaps this explains it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,349092,00.html

Police told not to massage crime rate

Police forces massage their crime figures and detection rates to "put them in the best possible light", an official Home Office inspection report confirmed for the first time yesterday.
The inquiry by the inspectorate of constabulary said that variations in police methods in recording crime meant the level should be 20% higher than the picture presented by the official figures published each year.

[CZ-75]

Sorry, but those sources are STILL too conservative to be believed. ;)


Also, they don't take into account recently introduced counting rule changes designed to obfuscate the issue and make comparisons of the worsening current statistics with previous data difficult. :D

[jimpeel]

So by your pseudoAgricola contention, even with the cops cooking the books to make the crime rate seem smaller, while making the crime detection rates seem larger, the figures given are far and away overblown compared to the ones in actuality -- or Agricola's parallel universe at least.

Nice catch.