Chris Grayling use of crime statistics 'mislead' public

Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling has been accused of misleading the public in his use of crime statistics.

The Tories have said data shows a big rise in violent crime during Labour's time in government - but the way the figures were compiled changed in 2002.
Now the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority has told Mr Grayling his statements are "likely to damage public trust in official statistics".
But Mr Grayling said the Tories would continue to argue that crime had risen.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson has said his opposite number should apologise.
'Likely to mislead'
Mr Grayling had to defend his position on Wednesday after the Conservatives sent the figures to activists in constituencies throughout England and Wales in an effort to demonstrate the government's failure on law and order.

I must take issue with what you said yesterday about violent crime statistics, which seems to me likely to damage public trust in official statistics Sir Michael Scholar's letter to the Conservatives

The BBC's home editor Mark Easton said the method of recording violent crime had changed in 2002, making the figures for the periods before and after that date non-comparable.
Now Sir Michael Scholar, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, has written to Mr Grayling saying: "I do not wish to become involved in political controversy, but I must take issue with what you said yesterday about violent crime statistics, which seems to me likely to damage public trust in official statistics."
In notes attached to the letter, the statistics authority said it regarded "a comparison, without qualification, of police-recorded statistics between the late 1990s and 2008/09 as likely to mislead the public".
The authority said the British Crime Survey (BCS), an annual questionnaire of 46,000 people, indicated there had been a big fall in violent crime since 1995.
It said the BCS was the most reliable way of assessing the trend, because it was "not affected by changes in reporting, police recording and local policing activity, and has been measuring crime in a consistent way since the survey began in 1981".
Responding to Sir Michael's letter, Mr Grayling told the BBC he was "quite happy to reflect changes in methodology when talking about these figures in the future".

MARK EASTON'S UK See the letter in full and comment on Mark Easton's blog

But he insisted: "The reality is these figures actually reflect real crimes, reported to real police stations, by real people.
"And the reality is however you caveat these figures, whatever qualifications you make about changes to the recording methods, they show a big increase in violent crime over the past decade and we are going to carry on saying that."
He added that he continued to believe the BCS, as a measure of crime, was "highly flawed".
'Selective'
The home secretary claimed the Conservatives had "plenty of form" when it came to the use of statistics for political ends.
"Now it has been confirmed officially that they have continually misled the public about crime," Mr Johnson said.
This is not the first time the statistics body has taken politicians to task for their use and interpretation of crime-related figures.
In 2008, it criticised Labour ministers for releasing what it said was "premature and selective" data about hospital admissions for knife wounds in certain parts of the country. The then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith apologised for the early release.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk

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About Crime Statistics

By Kirk Brown, eHow Contributor

When crimes such as burglaries, robberies or homicides are reported, this information goes into statistical databases that are utilized for a number of purposes. Crime statistics are often used to measure the safety of a specific area such as a neighborhood, city, state or nation. Crime statistics also help law enforcement officials set planning and budgeting priorities. In addition, lawmakers rely on these figures in setting sentencing guidelines and devising programs to aid crime victims.

1. Function

   • In order to better understand and control crime, accurate counts of its occurrence are needed. Crime statistics represent the recorded incidence of criminal behavior. These figures are typically compiled as uniform data on offenses and offenders derived from records of criminal justice agencies. Official crime statistics are published annually or periodically in relatively standard formats. The federal government's Bureau of Justice Statistics is the primary source of crime statistics in the United States.

   History

   • Crime statistic collection emerged in the early 19th century to measure whether criminal activity in certain areas was increasing or decreasing. France began systematically collecting national judicial statistics on prosecutions and convictions in 1825. Beginning in 1857, Great Britain was the first nation to systematically collect police data. In 1920, American criminologist August Vollmer proposed a national bureau of criminal records. The International Association of Chiefs of Police acted on this suggestion in 1927 by developing a plan for a national system of police statistics that would include known offenses and arrests collected from local police departments in each state. The Federal Bureau of Investigation became the clearinghouse for these statistics and published the first of its now-annual Uniform Crime Reports in 1931.
     To meet a growing need for more flexible, in-depth data, the FBI has supplemented its Uniform Crime Reports in recent years with what's known as the National Incident-Based Reporting System. Another relatively new wrinkle is the National Crime Victimization Survey, which collects data on the frequency, characteristics and consequences of criminal victimization from a nationally representative sample of 76,000 households.

   Types

   • The most frequently referenced classifications of criminal statistics are violent crimes and property crimes. Violent crimes include homicide, rape, robbery and assault. Property crimes consist of burglaries, thefts and motor vehicle thefts.

   Time Frame

   • During 2007, an estimated 1.4 million violent crimes occurred in the United States, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program. This total represented a .7 percent decrease from the prior year. Aggravated assault was the most commonly reported violent crime, accounting for nearly 61 percent of the overall tally.
     Also in 2007, there were an estimated 9.8 million property crime offenses in the United States., which was 1.4 percent less than 2006. The 2007 property crime total resulted in an estimated $17.6 billion in losses.

   Prevention/Solution

   • One goal of gathering and publishing crime statistics is to determine where offenses are taking place so officials can take action to combat the problem. Crime statistics may prompt police to increase patrols in specific crime-prone areas. The same statistics also might lead government agencies to offer tax incentives to businesses in hopes of creating more commerce and providing additional jobs in these areas as a deterrent to crime.

Source: www.ehow.com

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Is GDP An Obsolete Measure of Progress?

Seperti judulnya, pertanyaan inilah yang akan dijawab dalam artikel ini. Ada ukuran lain, selain GDP (PDB) atau usia harapan hidup, yang lebih dapat mendeskripsikan ukuran kemakmuran suatu negara, yaitu Happy Planet Index (HPI) atau mungkin kita lebih familiar dengan istilah Indeks Kebahagiaan. HPI mengkombinasikan metrik ekonomi dengan ukuran-ukuran lain yang bersifat subjektif, seperti kepuasan hidup. Pada tahun 2007 perusahaan riset Frontier telah melakukan metode riset ini. Metode ini sangat masuk akal dan tentu saja tidak dapat dipungkiri, karena apa artinya jika secara angka pertumbuhan ekonomi meningkat, tetapi setiap warga negara tidak merasa aman di negaranya sendiri. Apa artinya jika rata-rata usia harapan hidup di suatu negara meningkat, tetapi selama masa hidupnya itu mereka tidak menikmati kehidupannya. Karena itu, sudah semestinya data-data pemerintah didukung oleh data kualitatif untuk melengkapi data kuantitatif, yang tentunya menunjang dalam pengambilan keputusan. Perhitungannya? Sangat yakin kalau analisa statistik yang digunakan, tentunya akan berbicara lebih.

Chris Hondros / Getty

Since last summer the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has gone up — indeed, it grew at a surprising 5.7% rate in the 4th quarter — seeming to confirm what we've been hearing: the recession is officially over. But wait — foreclosure and unemployment rates remain high, and food banks are seeing record demand. Could it be that the GDP, that gold standard of economic data, might not be the best way to gauge a nation's relative prosperity?

Since it became the prime economic indicator during the Second World War (to monitor war production) many have criticized policy-makers' reliance on the GDP — and proposed substitute measures. For example, there is the Human Development Index (HDI), used by the UN's Development Programme, which considers life expectancy and literacy as well as standard of living as determined by GDP. And the Genuine Progress Indicator, which incorporates aspects of social welfare such as income equity, pollution, and access to health care. In the international community, perhaps the biggest nudge has come from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who commissioned a report by marquee-name economists, including Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, to find alternatives to what he calls "GDP fetishism".

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