Crime data a Gray area?

Anastasia De Waal, 7 February 2010

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling has pertinently illustrated the pitfalls of interpreting crime figures.

In asserting there has been a stark rise in violent crime in the last ten years, he failed to take into account the 2002/3 changes in how recorded violent crimes were classified by the Home Office, separating violence against the person with injury and violence against the person without injury.  Thus, by not comparing like with like yet claiming to, he has now landed himself in hot water with the Head of the UK Statistics Authority for “damaging public trust in official statistics”.

A major concern when it comes to crime data is the propensity for varying interpretation, and thereby the presentation, of the situation.  As such,
there is ample opportunity for what Chris Grayling did: construing official figures in such a way as to extrapolate the most sensationalist value
possible. The crime is misleading the public.

At all times, but particularly in the run-up to a General Election, it is crucially important that the public are able to trust quantitative
information – and to use it to make informed judgements.   Having crime data in the public domain that is easy to decipher and has not been
(mis)interpreted by Government departments or politicians is imperative. To this end, in the coming weeks the Crime section of the Civitas website, http://www.civitas.org.uk/crime/index.php, will be updated to include briefings and overviews based on the current crime scene in England and Wales.

Lara Natale