Drop use of the Andrew using it doesn't make you any more clever.
With regards to coping with questions from you it may happen when you actually ask one that is relevant and not one just for you to dispense more of your crap.
Giles Fraser
-
planeterotica
- Posts: 7093
- Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 2:40 am
Re: Sam Slater
David Johnson wrote:
> "This parish preacher is clearly talking out of his arse "
>
planeterotica wrote:
Giles Fraser was previous the canon of St Pauls cathedral before he resigned over the treatment of the occupy movement who camped outside of the cathedral in 2011, i met him a few times as i was a regular there at the time filming the goings on.
His father was Jewish which may or may not have some reflection on his views.
> "This parish preacher is clearly talking out of his arse "
>
planeterotica wrote:
Giles Fraser was previous the canon of St Pauls cathedral before he resigned over the treatment of the occupy movement who camped outside of the cathedral in 2011, i met him a few times as i was a regular there at the time filming the goings on.
His father was Jewish which may or may not have some reflection on his views.
-
David Johnson
- Posts: 7844
- Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 2:40 am
Re: Andrew
Ok, so you can't answer the question, Andrew.
I don't know why you don't want to be called Andrew. That is your name isn't it?
I don't know why you don't want to be called Andrew. That is your name isn't it?
Re: Essex Lad
Sam Slater wrote:
> Actually, Essex Lad, using government statistics might not
> always be the best option, but it is nearly always better than
> public perceptions, which are swayed by many things.
>
Yes, often living the life that the stats says does not exist...
Take the fallacious claim that crime is falling. Tell that to the old lady who is scared to leave her home after dusk. Explain to her that her streets are so safe the police have given up patrolling them; explain how they manipulate clearing of offences so it looks as if they are doing the job they're paid to do i.e. prevent crime rather than wasting time investigating a reality tv show or some posting on twitter...
> Actually, Essex Lad, using government statistics might not
> always be the best option, but it is nearly always better than
> public perceptions, which are swayed by many things.
>
Yes, often living the life that the stats says does not exist...
Take the fallacious claim that crime is falling. Tell that to the old lady who is scared to leave her home after dusk. Explain to her that her streets are so safe the police have given up patrolling them; explain how they manipulate clearing of offences so it looks as if they are doing the job they're paid to do i.e. prevent crime rather than wasting time investigating a reality tv show or some posting on twitter...
-
Sam Slater
- Posts: 11624
- Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 2:40 am
Re: Essex Lad
[quote]Take the fallacious claim that crime is falling. Tell that to the old lady who is scared to leave her home after dusk.[/quote]
That's silly. That's like when they say, "Drinking and driving kills!", and I come back with, "Tell that to Terry the milkman who used to drive home every night from the pub for 40 years, completely hammered and never had an accident in his life."
Crime is falling everywhere and that has been the general trend for decades. We are just more informed. Independent enquiries done by universities across the western world has tallied up pretty well with government statistics. They all, generally, say the same thing. There is less crime, fewer brutal murders and rapes, fewer people dying from wars, less slavery, fewer children working for a living and we're all living longer. Things now are better than at any time in history.
But good news doesn't have the same bite. It doesn't get your attention so news channels rarely lead with it.
You'd never hear a headline: "And in today's news, nobody was stabbed in Manchester over the weekend and no children went missing."
That's silly. That's like when they say, "Drinking and driving kills!", and I come back with, "Tell that to Terry the milkman who used to drive home every night from the pub for 40 years, completely hammered and never had an accident in his life."
Crime is falling everywhere and that has been the general trend for decades. We are just more informed. Independent enquiries done by universities across the western world has tallied up pretty well with government statistics. They all, generally, say the same thing. There is less crime, fewer brutal murders and rapes, fewer people dying from wars, less slavery, fewer children working for a living and we're all living longer. Things now are better than at any time in history.
But good news doesn't have the same bite. It doesn't get your attention so news channels rarely lead with it.
You'd never hear a headline: "And in today's news, nobody was stabbed in Manchester over the weekend and no children went missing."
[i]I used to spend a lot of time criticizing Islam on here in the noughties - but things are much better now.[/i]
Re: Essex Lad
Sam Slater wrote:
>
> Crime is falling everywhere and that has been the general trend
> for decades. We are just more informed. Independent enquiries
> done by universities across the western world has tallied up
> pretty well with government statistics. They all, generally,
> say the same thing. There is less crime, fewer brutal murders
> and rapes, fewer people dying from wars, less slavery, fewer
> children working for a living and we're all living longer.
> Things now are better than at any time in history.
>
Well it is falling insofar as it is not being recorded and therefore doesn't get on the books.
More than 800,000 - or one in five - of all crimes reported to the police each year are not being recorded by officers, a report suggests.
The problem is greatest for victims of violent crime, with a third going unrecorded. Of sexual offences, 26% are not recorded.
An HM Inspectorate of Constabulary report looked at more than 8,000 reports of crime in England and Wales.
The watchdog said the failure to record crime properly was "indefensible".
Home Secretary Theresa May described the findings as "utterly unacceptable", but police representatives said the situation had improved since the study.
The Association of Chief Police Officers said workload pressures, target culture and inadequate supervision all contributed to under-recording.
An unrecorded crime is classed as one that is reported to the police but not recorded as an offence. It means an investigation into the alleged crime is unlikely to happen.
'Serious concern'
The audit reviewed reports of crime between November 2012 and October 2013 across all 43 forces in England and Wales.
It found that:
Among the sample, 37 rape allegations were not recorded as a crime
For 3,842 reported crimes, offenders were given a caution or a penalty notice - but inspectors believe 500 of those should have been charged or given a heavier penalty
3,246 of those offences that were recorded were then deemed to be "no crimes" - but inspectors believe 20% of those decisions were wrong and a crime had been committed
The incidents recorded as "no-crimes" included 200 reports of rape and 250 of violent crime
More than 800 of the victims were not told of the decision to "no-crime" their report
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30081682
-------
So you would be more correct to say recorded crime is falling...
In 2012 the Prison population in England and Wales actually fell during last year ? dropping by 2,869 to 83,909. The prison population is still very, very high (in 1950-51 it was 20,474, in 1960-61 it was 27,099, in 1970 it was 39,028, in 1980 it was 42,300, in 1990 it was 45,636 and in 1999 it was 64,770, passing 70,000 for the first time only in 2002).
But under Kenneth Clarke there is no doubt that, by some means or other, a way was found to halt and even reverse the rise. The least likely explanation for this, especially under Mr Clarke, must be a tougher and more punitive justice system scaring wrongdoers back on to the path of righteousness. So either crime really is falling (a comically unlikely solution to the riddle) or a way has been found of a) ignoring more crimes b) not sending people to prison for offences which would formerly have merited prison sentences and c) letting more people out of prison more quickly. (Later addition**By the way, I don't myself believe that Mr Clarke's departure and replacemnt will make much difference. His successor, Chris Grayling, posed as a tough guy in a newspaper interview, but the Coalition and the Treasury together - as he well knows - are on Mr Clarke's side. So are the civil servants and the bureaucracy of the Criminal Justice system. So the Clarke policy will continue**).
One hint came when, The Sun revealed on page 2 that one in nine murderers is freed from prison after serving fewer than ten years of a life sentence. The figures, obtained by the genuinely conservative MP Philip Davies , showed that 275 convicted murderers were released during 2010 and 2011. Of these, 32 served fewer than ten years. Four served fewer than eight years, seven served fewer than nine. It is also the case that 35 people, who had been convicted of homicide, killed again after being released, surely the indefensible deaths of innocents caused by deliberate state action.
Will those who oppose the death penalty, because they are on principle unwilling to risk using it because there are a small number of wrongful executions, abide by the same principle, and also oppose the release of any convicted killers, lest they kill again? Understandable, but in that case their objection is not a principle, it?s an excuse behind which they hide their real beliefs.
I might point out here that a huge amount of prison space is taken up by murderers serving ?life? sentences. Unlike many ordinary criminals, who (after 15 or so crimes) then start serving very short repeated sentences, murderers must by law be kept inside for comparatively long periods. I believe at least one prison in the South of England is largely devoted to housing such prisoners, many of whom are regarded as unlikely to reoffend.
The Ministry of Justice says that the *average* time served by convicted murders is now 16 years. I would stress here that many crimes which would once have been treated as murder are now tried as manslaughter in the courts, in order to obtain a swifter, cheaper conviction. So one could only get a true picture of the situation by close study of manslaughter cases and their outcome, which I have not done, lacking the time and the resources. I suspect such a study would show that , if cases were categorised as murder or manslaughter according to the rules of 30 or 40 years ago, the average time served for murder would be a good deal lower than 16 years. But it would be legally difficult to obtain, publish or comment on such information in individual cases.
Even so, I think it fair to say that homicide is less sternly punished in this country than at any time in modern history. I?d also add, as I always do, that the reason why we don?t have more homicide is not that people are getting nicer or more well-behaved, but because medical skills are getting better. Many attacks involving extreme and potentially lethal violence, which would once have inevitably resulted in homicide, no longer do so because of much-improved emergency trauma treatment. These facts are an important example of the way in which raw figures, examined without background knowledge, can give a seriously misleading impression.
My main argument is that the crime figures are fiddled for political reasons, and cannot be trusted. And , thanks to the dedicated work of Dr Rodger Patrick, a former Chief Inspector in the West Midlands Police turned academic, I can tell you how it is done.
He has been researching the manipulation of crime data for many years. During this time, police performance has been politically important. Any politically sensitive statistic will be manipulated". This sits alongside the well-known ?Bikini Effect?, noted by Sovietologists in the 1960s, under which the official interest in deception is so great that ?What the figures conceal is more interesting than what they reveal?.
For example, in a period when the police are trying to obtain more money and resources, and the party in power is keen to oblige, police and state might co-operate to give the impression that crime is rising. When the government of the day is anxious to show that its ?crackdowns? are working, then the figures will be massaged to show that crime is falling. But the police, with other objectives, may not co-operate. Cue conflicts between different sorts of statistics. Similar things are true of inflation figures, exam results, school performance. But we will stick to crime.
Often the attempts to manipulate statistics show up when one force or another seems to be doing particularly, exceptionally well. Detection rates, for instance, sometimes rise quite spectacularly. In the case of at least one force, large numbers of supposed detections were obtained through offences being ?Taken Into Consideration?(TICs) *after* culprits had been convicted and sentenced. Or crimes were dealt with through ?Penalty Notices for Disorder? (PNDs), thus avoiding the expense of a trial, but also sparing the culprit from proper punishment . You will have to get used to quite a lot of acronyms in this discussion, for there are more to come.
TICs are supposed to be offences which accused persons admit to when they plead guilty, so that they can be sentenced for them as well, and will not be prosecuted for them in future . You can easily see how a police force under pressure to show evidence of improved performance might persuade criminals to admit falsely to such offences, thus increasing their clear-up rate. There have been instances when this has been proven to happen. As for PNDs, once again it may be useful for criminals and police, in that the police can say the offence has been dealt with, while the offender avoids prosecution and a much more serious penalty.
Then there is what Dr Patrick refers to as ?nodding?, when the number of burglaries and vehicle thefts ?detected? through TICs suddenly rises. If malpractice is exposed, the numbers then fall.
Next there is what Dr Patrick calls ?cuffing? ( a term taken from the trade vocabulary of conjurors, who use it to describe the hiding of objects up one?s sleeve).
This, most crucially, is used to deflate the level of *reported crime*. You will note that it is *reported* or *recorded* crime that is said to have fallen in the figures leaked at the weekend. This is crime actually fed into the records by police forces, who have compiled the figures themselves. It is different from the levels of crime recorded by the British Crime Survey, an opinion poll of the over-16s which has considerable faults (not least that it leaves out so many young people, who are often victims of crime) .
Older figures, of arrests and convictions, are simply not comparable with either of these measures, as police are often reluctant to make arrests for ?minor? crimes because of the appalling bureaucracy they must then suffer; because those arrested are often not charged by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), when they would have been in the days when police took such decisions;and because a lot of prosecutions fail or are dropped ; and because a growing number of offences are dealt with by OCDs ( see above) including (largely unpaid) fines, farcically feeble ?restorative justice? and non-punitive actions such as probation or community service orders.
An attempt was made to avoid such ?cuffing? when in, 2002 a National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) was introduced. This was based on the idea that the victim decided whether he or she had been the object of a crime, and what that crime was.
But around 2004, this absolute standard was altered. Instead, the police were asked to classify notified crimes according to the ?balance of probability?. This meant that individual forces were once again free to decide whether a crime really had taken place. Sometimes senior officers cancelled crimes that had been recorded, by ruling that ?no crime? had taken place. A BBC survey in 2011 found wild variations among forces in how many crimes had been ?no crimed? (2% in one force, 30% in another) . These decisions are recorded and so fiddling is fairly easily detected.
Since this method was exposed, forces have tended to put pressure on officers not to record an event as a crime in the first place. Thus members of the public are asked to accept that that a theft is in fact no such thing, just ?lost property?. Or a group of burglaries in one block of flats are classified as one crime.
One way in which these figures are influenced is in the police response to reports of (for instance) stolen mobile phones. There have been cases of youngsters (with no conceivable dishonest motive as they were not insured) threatened with prosecution for making false claims that their phones had been stolen. Could this be to help keep the figures down.
Some social scientists have in any case estimated that around half of all robberies and of theft from the person are never reported to the police at all, probably because the items are uninsured and the hope of detection is very small. The fact that many people do in fact have insurance on mobile phones may have increased the number of such cases, previously unrecorded, which began to be recorded.
In one of his papers, Dr Patrick shows how levels of certain crimes dropped abruptly when particular forces adopted new policies of challenging and discouraging the reporting of certain types of crime. This was a shift from a victim-centred approach, under which the police believe you unless there is evidence to the contrary, to a police-centred approach, under which the person who reports a crime is not believed until he can produce proof of the crime.
I mention here a general point, that I often hear from readers, that police are uninterested in pursuing a crime unless actual CCTV evidence exists of it taking place, and a particular point, the extraordinary account of a burglary in Southampton, carried out in broad daylight (with a crowbar) and recorded on a web cam, so clearly that the burglar?s face is plainly visible. Police did then act and the burglar was convicted, but he was then (ludicrously) bailed while he waited to be sentenced presumably because of the usual ?social inquiry reports? which have to be compiled before anyone is sentenced these days, so that excuses can be found for their behaviour.
The burglar then simply failed to turn up for sentence. Despite his victim reporting sightings of him to the police, nothing was done until the victim and his friends tracked down the culprit to his pace of work.
The burglar was then sentenced to 30 months in prison (in reality, a maximum of 15 months and probably a good deal less than that), despite the fact that he was already subject to a ?community order? for a drugs offence. The story is amazing in several ways, and the video footage dispiriting and disgusting. But the simple inertia of the criminal justice system, when a convicted burglar is on the loose, is not accidental or untypical. There is no moral fury in the system, just a weary bureaucratic going-through-the-motions ?oh well then, if you insist? attitude. If the victim hadn?t captured the event on film, how much chance do you think there would have been of anything happening? The thief thought he was safe, having smashed another camera on his way in, and failed to realise there was a second one. He was very nearly right to think he was safe. But I digress. This is a comment upon the spirit of the system, which of course affects its behaviour.
Dr Patrick quotes Hans de Bruijn, an expert on performance measurement, saying that any system of performance management can be threatened by the activity known as ?gaming? , generally accepted as one of the failings of the Soviet centrally planned economy?. What this means is that , seeking to meet targets, those involved will distort the figures to please their political or other masters.
As De Bruijn wrote: ?Once a system of performance measurement has been designed and introduced, the perverse effects will, in the long term, force out the beneficial effects?.
Another method mentioned by Dr Patrick is (apart from deliberate under-recording and the conversion of post-sentence admissions into TICs, dealt with above) is ?the shifting of efforts towards easier-to-detect offences, and the systematic redeployment of specialist officers traditionally committed to combating serious and organised crime in inner city areas to affluent suburbs?. This is known as ?skewing?.
One thing which Dr Patrick homes in on the use of cautions and informal warnings. ?This resulted in many individuals gaining a police record when the evidence was insufficient to secure a conviction at court. In some cases the suspect would be unaware they were being recorded as responsible for an offence, this included serious offences such as rape and kidnapping?. This might mean they continue in their criminal behaviour, and do much more serious things later. They also escape justice, as their crimes are dealt with through minor fixed penalties or cautions, and cannot thereafter be brought to court.
We have dealt with ?cuffing? , ?nodding? ?skewing? and ?gaming?. Another method available to police forces which want to give a false impression are ?stitching? under which offenders are charged with crimes when there is insufficient evidence. The police know perfectly well the CPS will not pursue the charge, but can still claim that the crime has been ?solved? in records.
You might think that the massaging of figures could be shown openly to clash with the British Crime Survey, which for all its faults cannot be manipulated in the same way. But Dr Patrick says the Home Office has in recent years stopped asking the specific questions in the BCS , on which such comparisons could be based.
I think those who ceaselessly maintain that the official crime figures should be believed without question have to re-examine their position in the light of Dr Patrick?s research (which I have here briefly summarised from voluminous papers).
>
> Crime is falling everywhere and that has been the general trend
> for decades. We are just more informed. Independent enquiries
> done by universities across the western world has tallied up
> pretty well with government statistics. They all, generally,
> say the same thing. There is less crime, fewer brutal murders
> and rapes, fewer people dying from wars, less slavery, fewer
> children working for a living and we're all living longer.
> Things now are better than at any time in history.
>
Well it is falling insofar as it is not being recorded and therefore doesn't get on the books.
More than 800,000 - or one in five - of all crimes reported to the police each year are not being recorded by officers, a report suggests.
The problem is greatest for victims of violent crime, with a third going unrecorded. Of sexual offences, 26% are not recorded.
An HM Inspectorate of Constabulary report looked at more than 8,000 reports of crime in England and Wales.
The watchdog said the failure to record crime properly was "indefensible".
Home Secretary Theresa May described the findings as "utterly unacceptable", but police representatives said the situation had improved since the study.
The Association of Chief Police Officers said workload pressures, target culture and inadequate supervision all contributed to under-recording.
An unrecorded crime is classed as one that is reported to the police but not recorded as an offence. It means an investigation into the alleged crime is unlikely to happen.
'Serious concern'
The audit reviewed reports of crime between November 2012 and October 2013 across all 43 forces in England and Wales.
It found that:
Among the sample, 37 rape allegations were not recorded as a crime
For 3,842 reported crimes, offenders were given a caution or a penalty notice - but inspectors believe 500 of those should have been charged or given a heavier penalty
3,246 of those offences that were recorded were then deemed to be "no crimes" - but inspectors believe 20% of those decisions were wrong and a crime had been committed
The incidents recorded as "no-crimes" included 200 reports of rape and 250 of violent crime
More than 800 of the victims were not told of the decision to "no-crime" their report
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30081682
-------
So you would be more correct to say recorded crime is falling...
In 2012 the Prison population in England and Wales actually fell during last year ? dropping by 2,869 to 83,909. The prison population is still very, very high (in 1950-51 it was 20,474, in 1960-61 it was 27,099, in 1970 it was 39,028, in 1980 it was 42,300, in 1990 it was 45,636 and in 1999 it was 64,770, passing 70,000 for the first time only in 2002).
But under Kenneth Clarke there is no doubt that, by some means or other, a way was found to halt and even reverse the rise. The least likely explanation for this, especially under Mr Clarke, must be a tougher and more punitive justice system scaring wrongdoers back on to the path of righteousness. So either crime really is falling (a comically unlikely solution to the riddle) or a way has been found of a) ignoring more crimes b) not sending people to prison for offences which would formerly have merited prison sentences and c) letting more people out of prison more quickly. (Later addition**By the way, I don't myself believe that Mr Clarke's departure and replacemnt will make much difference. His successor, Chris Grayling, posed as a tough guy in a newspaper interview, but the Coalition and the Treasury together - as he well knows - are on Mr Clarke's side. So are the civil servants and the bureaucracy of the Criminal Justice system. So the Clarke policy will continue**).
One hint came when, The Sun revealed on page 2 that one in nine murderers is freed from prison after serving fewer than ten years of a life sentence. The figures, obtained by the genuinely conservative MP Philip Davies , showed that 275 convicted murderers were released during 2010 and 2011. Of these, 32 served fewer than ten years. Four served fewer than eight years, seven served fewer than nine. It is also the case that 35 people, who had been convicted of homicide, killed again after being released, surely the indefensible deaths of innocents caused by deliberate state action.
Will those who oppose the death penalty, because they are on principle unwilling to risk using it because there are a small number of wrongful executions, abide by the same principle, and also oppose the release of any convicted killers, lest they kill again? Understandable, but in that case their objection is not a principle, it?s an excuse behind which they hide their real beliefs.
I might point out here that a huge amount of prison space is taken up by murderers serving ?life? sentences. Unlike many ordinary criminals, who (after 15 or so crimes) then start serving very short repeated sentences, murderers must by law be kept inside for comparatively long periods. I believe at least one prison in the South of England is largely devoted to housing such prisoners, many of whom are regarded as unlikely to reoffend.
The Ministry of Justice says that the *average* time served by convicted murders is now 16 years. I would stress here that many crimes which would once have been treated as murder are now tried as manslaughter in the courts, in order to obtain a swifter, cheaper conviction. So one could only get a true picture of the situation by close study of manslaughter cases and their outcome, which I have not done, lacking the time and the resources. I suspect such a study would show that , if cases were categorised as murder or manslaughter according to the rules of 30 or 40 years ago, the average time served for murder would be a good deal lower than 16 years. But it would be legally difficult to obtain, publish or comment on such information in individual cases.
Even so, I think it fair to say that homicide is less sternly punished in this country than at any time in modern history. I?d also add, as I always do, that the reason why we don?t have more homicide is not that people are getting nicer or more well-behaved, but because medical skills are getting better. Many attacks involving extreme and potentially lethal violence, which would once have inevitably resulted in homicide, no longer do so because of much-improved emergency trauma treatment. These facts are an important example of the way in which raw figures, examined without background knowledge, can give a seriously misleading impression.
My main argument is that the crime figures are fiddled for political reasons, and cannot be trusted. And , thanks to the dedicated work of Dr Rodger Patrick, a former Chief Inspector in the West Midlands Police turned academic, I can tell you how it is done.
He has been researching the manipulation of crime data for many years. During this time, police performance has been politically important. Any politically sensitive statistic will be manipulated". This sits alongside the well-known ?Bikini Effect?, noted by Sovietologists in the 1960s, under which the official interest in deception is so great that ?What the figures conceal is more interesting than what they reveal?.
For example, in a period when the police are trying to obtain more money and resources, and the party in power is keen to oblige, police and state might co-operate to give the impression that crime is rising. When the government of the day is anxious to show that its ?crackdowns? are working, then the figures will be massaged to show that crime is falling. But the police, with other objectives, may not co-operate. Cue conflicts between different sorts of statistics. Similar things are true of inflation figures, exam results, school performance. But we will stick to crime.
Often the attempts to manipulate statistics show up when one force or another seems to be doing particularly, exceptionally well. Detection rates, for instance, sometimes rise quite spectacularly. In the case of at least one force, large numbers of supposed detections were obtained through offences being ?Taken Into Consideration?(TICs) *after* culprits had been convicted and sentenced. Or crimes were dealt with through ?Penalty Notices for Disorder? (PNDs), thus avoiding the expense of a trial, but also sparing the culprit from proper punishment . You will have to get used to quite a lot of acronyms in this discussion, for there are more to come.
TICs are supposed to be offences which accused persons admit to when they plead guilty, so that they can be sentenced for them as well, and will not be prosecuted for them in future . You can easily see how a police force under pressure to show evidence of improved performance might persuade criminals to admit falsely to such offences, thus increasing their clear-up rate. There have been instances when this has been proven to happen. As for PNDs, once again it may be useful for criminals and police, in that the police can say the offence has been dealt with, while the offender avoids prosecution and a much more serious penalty.
Then there is what Dr Patrick refers to as ?nodding?, when the number of burglaries and vehicle thefts ?detected? through TICs suddenly rises. If malpractice is exposed, the numbers then fall.
Next there is what Dr Patrick calls ?cuffing? ( a term taken from the trade vocabulary of conjurors, who use it to describe the hiding of objects up one?s sleeve).
This, most crucially, is used to deflate the level of *reported crime*. You will note that it is *reported* or *recorded* crime that is said to have fallen in the figures leaked at the weekend. This is crime actually fed into the records by police forces, who have compiled the figures themselves. It is different from the levels of crime recorded by the British Crime Survey, an opinion poll of the over-16s which has considerable faults (not least that it leaves out so many young people, who are often victims of crime) .
Older figures, of arrests and convictions, are simply not comparable with either of these measures, as police are often reluctant to make arrests for ?minor? crimes because of the appalling bureaucracy they must then suffer; because those arrested are often not charged by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), when they would have been in the days when police took such decisions;and because a lot of prosecutions fail or are dropped ; and because a growing number of offences are dealt with by OCDs ( see above) including (largely unpaid) fines, farcically feeble ?restorative justice? and non-punitive actions such as probation or community service orders.
An attempt was made to avoid such ?cuffing? when in, 2002 a National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) was introduced. This was based on the idea that the victim decided whether he or she had been the object of a crime, and what that crime was.
But around 2004, this absolute standard was altered. Instead, the police were asked to classify notified crimes according to the ?balance of probability?. This meant that individual forces were once again free to decide whether a crime really had taken place. Sometimes senior officers cancelled crimes that had been recorded, by ruling that ?no crime? had taken place. A BBC survey in 2011 found wild variations among forces in how many crimes had been ?no crimed? (2% in one force, 30% in another) . These decisions are recorded and so fiddling is fairly easily detected.
Since this method was exposed, forces have tended to put pressure on officers not to record an event as a crime in the first place. Thus members of the public are asked to accept that that a theft is in fact no such thing, just ?lost property?. Or a group of burglaries in one block of flats are classified as one crime.
One way in which these figures are influenced is in the police response to reports of (for instance) stolen mobile phones. There have been cases of youngsters (with no conceivable dishonest motive as they were not insured) threatened with prosecution for making false claims that their phones had been stolen. Could this be to help keep the figures down.
Some social scientists have in any case estimated that around half of all robberies and of theft from the person are never reported to the police at all, probably because the items are uninsured and the hope of detection is very small. The fact that many people do in fact have insurance on mobile phones may have increased the number of such cases, previously unrecorded, which began to be recorded.
In one of his papers, Dr Patrick shows how levels of certain crimes dropped abruptly when particular forces adopted new policies of challenging and discouraging the reporting of certain types of crime. This was a shift from a victim-centred approach, under which the police believe you unless there is evidence to the contrary, to a police-centred approach, under which the person who reports a crime is not believed until he can produce proof of the crime.
I mention here a general point, that I often hear from readers, that police are uninterested in pursuing a crime unless actual CCTV evidence exists of it taking place, and a particular point, the extraordinary account of a burglary in Southampton, carried out in broad daylight (with a crowbar) and recorded on a web cam, so clearly that the burglar?s face is plainly visible. Police did then act and the burglar was convicted, but he was then (ludicrously) bailed while he waited to be sentenced presumably because of the usual ?social inquiry reports? which have to be compiled before anyone is sentenced these days, so that excuses can be found for their behaviour.
The burglar then simply failed to turn up for sentence. Despite his victim reporting sightings of him to the police, nothing was done until the victim and his friends tracked down the culprit to his pace of work.
The burglar was then sentenced to 30 months in prison (in reality, a maximum of 15 months and probably a good deal less than that), despite the fact that he was already subject to a ?community order? for a drugs offence. The story is amazing in several ways, and the video footage dispiriting and disgusting. But the simple inertia of the criminal justice system, when a convicted burglar is on the loose, is not accidental or untypical. There is no moral fury in the system, just a weary bureaucratic going-through-the-motions ?oh well then, if you insist? attitude. If the victim hadn?t captured the event on film, how much chance do you think there would have been of anything happening? The thief thought he was safe, having smashed another camera on his way in, and failed to realise there was a second one. He was very nearly right to think he was safe. But I digress. This is a comment upon the spirit of the system, which of course affects its behaviour.
Dr Patrick quotes Hans de Bruijn, an expert on performance measurement, saying that any system of performance management can be threatened by the activity known as ?gaming? , generally accepted as one of the failings of the Soviet centrally planned economy?. What this means is that , seeking to meet targets, those involved will distort the figures to please their political or other masters.
As De Bruijn wrote: ?Once a system of performance measurement has been designed and introduced, the perverse effects will, in the long term, force out the beneficial effects?.
Another method mentioned by Dr Patrick is (apart from deliberate under-recording and the conversion of post-sentence admissions into TICs, dealt with above) is ?the shifting of efforts towards easier-to-detect offences, and the systematic redeployment of specialist officers traditionally committed to combating serious and organised crime in inner city areas to affluent suburbs?. This is known as ?skewing?.
One thing which Dr Patrick homes in on the use of cautions and informal warnings. ?This resulted in many individuals gaining a police record when the evidence was insufficient to secure a conviction at court. In some cases the suspect would be unaware they were being recorded as responsible for an offence, this included serious offences such as rape and kidnapping?. This might mean they continue in their criminal behaviour, and do much more serious things later. They also escape justice, as their crimes are dealt with through minor fixed penalties or cautions, and cannot thereafter be brought to court.
We have dealt with ?cuffing? , ?nodding? ?skewing? and ?gaming?. Another method available to police forces which want to give a false impression are ?stitching? under which offenders are charged with crimes when there is insufficient evidence. The police know perfectly well the CPS will not pursue the charge, but can still claim that the crime has been ?solved? in records.
You might think that the massaging of figures could be shown openly to clash with the British Crime Survey, which for all its faults cannot be manipulated in the same way. But Dr Patrick says the Home Office has in recent years stopped asking the specific questions in the BCS , on which such comparisons could be based.
I think those who ceaselessly maintain that the official crime figures should be believed without question have to re-examine their position in the light of Dr Patrick?s research (which I have here briefly summarised from voluminous papers).