British crime stats: the numbers are falling, you know that, right?

[matgb]

Right, I'm off home and then probably into Westminster, but before I go, greyarea:

One of my biggest bugbears are people - generally fairly rational people in most ways - who bleat on about how the UK is going to shit, how it's not like it was in the old days, how there's no respect for anyone any more. Proof for this is normally that crime is shooting up; you can barely leave your house without some hoodie kicking your head in, and once you make it back from A&E you'll probably find your house burgled and your car missing. And a big shit in the middle of the carpet.

There's huge disagreement on how to handle this massive rise, of course, but the fact that there is a rise is almost universally agreed on.

Except - well, crime isn't actually going up. Overall, crime has been dropping for over a decade. Chances of being burgled are through the floor, as is vehicle crime.

It comes complete with links, sources and explanations of the falling crime numbers, well worth a good read.

Comments

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

See, *I* knew that, but then I don't read the Daily Mail. Try persuading anybody who does, though...

[eldar.livejournal.com]

The cynics amongst us might say that crime numbers are dropping because the way that crimes are counted has been changed. Or because people aren't reporting crimes any more because they're scared that the Hoodies will beat them up on the way to the police station. Or that the police will shoot them on their way to the police station.

After all, they're only statistics.... and who needs them when you've got such trustworthy standard-bearing objective publications as the Daily Mail, the Express, and the red-tops around to tell us the real truth?

[anisiriusmagus.livejournal.com]

Firstly, hello! I'm one of the number of people who has added you to my f-list recently. I have been thinking about it for, oh, a few months. Pretty much since snapesbabe started mentioning you on her LJ, and we've known each other since around February 2002. I'm just shy, and procrastinate a lot, so I haven't added you sooner.

On the subject of crime, I guess it's like a lot of things, scare mongering makes the general public who can't be bothered to do the actual research think that things are worse than they actually are. Yorksher is a very nice place to be (I used to live in Ehssix until two years ago) and in my little corner, the crime rate is very low.

[davidnm.livejournal.com]

It's the usual cognitive error thing: people are biased to remember the negative (e.g. the one day your wallet gets nicked, versus the rest of the year when it doesn't type thing), I suppose.

The other thing the Daily Mail and co. often skip is the 'relative' rates of crime. If you look at the murder rate per million people (the one that reflects the chances of it actually happening to you), then that's actually been falling steadily for the last 800 years. Progress for you, I suppose.