Figure fiddling

The British Crime Survey is widely held to be the most reliable representation of the incidence of crime in this country. It's all relative though. Think tankers Civitas have just put out a press release which says that the BCS might be leaving three million crimes per year out of the figures. Probably par for the course for government statistics.

It reveals that, ever since its inception in 1981, the British Crime Survey (BCS) has omitted many crimes committed against people who have been repeat victims. If people are victimised in the same way by the same perpetrators more than five times in a year, the number of crimes is put down as five. The justification for this was ‘to avoid extreme cases distorting the rates’, but, as Farrell and Pease point out, ‘if the people who say they suffered ten incidents really did, it is capping the series at five that distorts the rate’.

So please remember people. Once you've been mugged five times, don't even bother telling the police, cause they'll just throw the report in the bin.