Crime Of The Century - A Chilling Look At Crime Statistics In The UK
In 1998, changes to the Home Office Counting Rules clarified the recording of multiple victims of related incidents and added a number of new offences to the list of those crimes that the police should report in their statistics (see Povey and Prime, 1999). Following a recommendation in the Home Office Review of Crime Statistics (Simmons, 2000), 2001/02, saw the publication of the first crime volume presenting data from both the British Crime Survey and police recorded crime data together (Simmons et al., 2002). The result has been a more holistic approach to the presentation of statistics on crime.
In 2002/03 further change was introduced with the specific aim of improving the way in which the police record crime. The National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) has sought to bring about a victim-centred approach to crime recording and to provide a basis for greater consistency of recording between forces. In the long term, the changes included within the NCRS will produce recorded crime data which are increasing reliable, fair and comparable – a vision shared by the Home Office, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, the Association of Chief Police Officers and everyone with a stake in understanding the true pattern of crime in England and Wales.
In the short term, however, the cost of introducing these changes has been to artificially inflate estimates of the increase in the number of crimes recorded by the police. The main Crime bulletin (2002/03), shows that without taking into account the impact of introducing the NCRS the numbers of crimes recorded by police forces in England and Wales increased by seven per cent from 2001/02. This stands in stark contrast to the overall trends in the British Crime Survey, which show a decrease of two per cent from 2001/02 to 2002/03. The difference can largely be explained by the introduction of the NCRS and it has therefore been imperative to monitor the impact of these changes to enable the Home Office to provide a better indication of the actual level of police recorded crime in 2002/03. When the effect of the NCRS is taken into account, police recorded crime decreased by three per cent overall from 2001/02 to 2002/03.
Considerable attention has been paid to how the impact of the NCRS can best be measured. The method of doing so and the findings are both described in Part One. The report provides estimations of the NCRS effect nationally for different offence types and for all crime. Part Two
http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/rdsolr3203intro.pdf provides the analysis of the impact of the NCRS in each police force in England and Wales.
It is important that the national crime statistics present a clear picture without compromising their accuracy.
The adjustments made to the police recorded crime figures in 2002/03 as a result of the NCRS have been necessary to inform everyone involved in reducing crime, not least the public, about the real trends in crime in England and Wales. However, adjusting crime statistics inevitably introduces an added layer of complexity to their interpretation.
79
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122