| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? 11:01 - May 16 with 2979 views | DJR |
One of Labour's pledges this morning is the following.
5) Crack down on antisocial behaviour with more neighbourhood police paid for by ending wasteful contracts, tough new penalties for offenders, and a new network of youth hubs.
Interestingly though, the following article suggests public perceptions of crime bear no relation to reality. It's almost as if the parties are scaremongering to win votes, which seems a crazy state of affairs.
https://theconversation.com/most-crime-has-fallen-by-90-in-30-years-so-why-does-
Here are some extracts.
Seventy-eight per cent of people in England and Wales think that crime has gone up in the last few years, according to the latest survey. But the data on actual crime shows the exact opposite.
As of 2024, violence, burglary and car crime have been declining for 30 years and by close to 90%, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) – our best indicator of true crime levels. Unlike police data, the CSEW is not subject to variations in reporting and recording.
The drop in violence includes domestic violence and other violence against women. Anti-social behaviour has similarly declined. While increased fraud and computer misuse now make up half of crime, this mainly reflects how far the rates of other crimes have fallen.
All high-income countries have experienced similar trends, and there is scientific consensus that the decline in crime is a real phenomenon.
There are, of course, exceptions. Some places, times and crime types had a less pronounced decline or even an increase. For many years, phone theft was an exception to the general decline in theft. Cybercrime, measured by the CSEW as fraud and computer misuse, has increased and is the most prominent exception.
But this increase was not due to thwarted burglars and car thieves switching targets: the skillset, resources and rewards for cybercrime are very different. Rather, it reflects new crime opportunities facilitated by the internet. Preventive policy and practice is slowly getting better at closing off opportunities for computer misuse, but work is needed to accelerate those prevention efforts. [Post edited 16 May 11:04]
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| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 15:50 - May 16 with 524 views | DJR |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 15:15 - May 16 by vilanovablue |
I have been shouted down so often when I have discussed this on social media before. The facts are pretty clear. Knife crime a classic example. |
I am not sure what you have argued on social media, but I thought this an interesting passage in a House of Commons Library article on knife crime.
"Police and courts crime data depends on offences being reported to the authorities, which is a weakness. To get a more rounded view on knife crime it is useful to supplement this information with alternative sources such as NHS hospital data.
Data from NHS Digital shows there were 3,775 “hospital episodes” recorded in English hospitals in 2022/23 due to assault by a sharp object. This was a 9.5% decrease compared to 2021/22, and a 3.6% increase compared to 2014/15." [Post edited 16 May 15:51]
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| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 15:56 - May 16 with 501 views | tonybied |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 15:21 - May 16 by jayessess |
75,000 people is a pretty huge sample for most survey work (national opinion polls are usually 1-2000, for instance), but it's still only 0.1% of the population, so pretty unlikely to be people known personally to you.
People around you appear in these surveys via the surveyers interviewing people who are similar to them in terms of key variables (income, region, ethnicity, gender, age etc.) and weighting their answers in terms of how prevalent that sort of person is in the population as a whole. |
Is it not kind of presumptive to survey 0.1% of the population and then state crime is decreasing based on the results. This maybe massive survey compared to others but it's a tiny sample compared to the total population.
The only true way to know if crime really is falling is to study police figures, but if the baseline on how these stats is being changed by the governors of this information all the time we don't have a true datum to compare to do we? [Post edited 16 May 15:58]
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| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 16:28 - May 16 with 467 views | jayessess |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 15:56 - May 16 by tonybied |
Is it not kind of presumptive to survey 0.1% of the population and then state crime is decreasing based on the results. This maybe massive survey compared to others but it's a tiny sample compared to the total population.
The only true way to know if crime really is falling is to study police figures, but if the baseline on how these stats is being changed by the governors of this information all the time we don't have a true datum to compare to do we? [Post edited 16 May 15:58]
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Not particularly.
Sampling is the ordinary way that societies find out anything at a whole population level. It's just not practical (or cost effective) to survey every single person in the country on a regular basis. This type of methodology is used for everything from market research to political opinion polls.
The sample is designed to be big enough that unusual answers ("outliers") don't affect the data too much and representative enough that it's capturing the experiences of all types of people in the proportion that they exist in society (there's no reason, statistically, to imagine that a significant number of respondents will have unusual experiences of crime). That's basically the only method that exists for gathering this sort of data and making a best estimate of what the trends are. The alternative is to just be ignorant of what's happening!
(Should add, by the way, that no one in the ONS has any incentive to deceive anyone here. They're employed to estimate trends as accurately as possible, by doing representative statistical work. ) [Post edited 16 May 16:42]
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| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 16:40 - May 16 with 433 views | BloomBlue |
Data is only worthwhile if it contains all data. Lots of crime like muggings, antisocial behaviour etc aren't reported where I live in London as they know the MET won't investigate, so excluded from official data. But everyone who lives around here know its happening regularly
So peoples perception (well actual knowledge) is crime is increasing but the official crime reported figures don't reflect it |  | | |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 16:48 - May 16 with 427 views | jayessess |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 16:40 - May 16 by BloomBlue |
Data is only worthwhile if it contains all data. Lots of crime like muggings, antisocial behaviour etc aren't reported where I live in London as they know the MET won't investigate, so excluded from official data. But everyone who lives around here know its happening regularly
So peoples perception (well actual knowledge) is crime is increasing but the official crime reported figures don't reflect it |
As has already been pointed out several times, this thread isn't about Police Reported crime statistics, it's about the annual crime survey, which asks a weighted sample of people whether they've been a victim of crime over the past 12 months (and if so, what crime it was), precisely as a way of getting data that avoids this problem! | |
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| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 17:06 - May 16 with 410 views | bluelagos |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 15:56 - May 16 by tonybied |
Is it not kind of presumptive to survey 0.1% of the population and then state crime is decreasing based on the results. This maybe massive survey compared to others but it's a tiny sample compared to the total population.
The only true way to know if crime really is falling is to study police figures, but if the baseline on how these stats is being changed by the governors of this information all the time we don't have a true datum to compare to do we? [Post edited 16 May 15:58]
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I did a bit of stats at degree level (my first year was joined with a Stats degree before splitting off) - so know a little bit.
As someone else pointed out - the sample size here is very large. Opinion pollsters often go on around a 1k sample as that is more than big enough to get an accurate picture. So a 30k sample survey really will be very good.
The sample isn't just random people - it will match society's splits in terms of age, gender, race, social class etc. They make sure it matches society - to ensure all the biases you might see (if you only questioned say the poorest people) are ironed out.
Can see no reason at all to dismiss the findings due to them using a sample. Far far more accurate than them using police figures will be biased by lots of factors - such as some crimes being far more under reported than others. |  |
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| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 17:11 - May 16 with 394 views | tonybied |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 16:48 - May 16 by jayessess |
As has already been pointed out several times, this thread isn't about Police Reported crime statistics, it's about the annual crime survey, which asks a weighted sample of people whether they've been a victim of crime over the past 12 months (and if so, what crime it was), precisely as a way of getting data that avoids this problem! |
The thread is called "Crime: perceptions divorced from reality?", the nations perceptions could possibly be gathered by a survey but reduction in crime cannot. To claim crime has been reduced you need all data not a survey of 0.1% of the population, otherwise it's not reality. | | | |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 17:19 - May 16 with 379 views | bluelagos |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 17:11 - May 16 by tonybied |
The thread is called "Crime: perceptions divorced from reality?", the nations perceptions could possibly be gathered by a survey but reduction in crime cannot. To claim crime has been reduced you need all data not a survey of 0.1% of the population, otherwise it's not reality. |
That's really not true. The whole point of sampling is that by doing it properly you can then estimate a situation for the whole population from the situation of a cut shot of people.
Say you wanted to know how many Ipswich fans were happy with the prices of tickets. You could ask 500 from each stand, split to match the ages and sex of attendees and you'd get an estimated picture that say 75% are happy.
So much easier than asking 30k people to get the complete picture which might be say 74 or 76% | |
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| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 17:32 - May 16 with 353 views | tonybied |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 17:19 - May 16 by bluelagos |
That's really not true. The whole point of sampling is that by doing it properly you can then estimate a situation for the whole population from the situation of a cut shot of people.
Say you wanted to know how many Ipswich fans were happy with the prices of tickets. You could ask 500 from each stand, split to match the ages and sex of attendees and you'd get an estimated picture that say 75% are happy.
So much easier than asking 30k people to get the complete picture which might be say 74 or 76% |
Which is fine for gathering the public "feeling" on something but the thread is about comparing that feeling to reality. A percentage of peoples experience of being victims of crime is not reality, no matter how high the percentage. | | | |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 17:42 - May 16 with 337 views | Herbivore |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 17:11 - May 16 by tonybied |
The thread is called "Crime: perceptions divorced from reality?", the nations perceptions could possibly be gathered by a survey but reduction in crime cannot. To claim crime has been reduced you need all data not a survey of 0.1% of the population, otherwise it's not reality. |
This has been explained to you quite a lot. If you have a robust sample you can extrapolate an accurate national picture, which is what they do. Crime figures are less reliable as people do not always report crimes and changes in how crimes are recorded can skew the data. |  |
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| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 17:57 - May 16 with 303 views | jayessess |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 17:32 - May 16 by tonybied |
Which is fine for gathering the public "feeling" on something but the thread is about comparing that feeling to reality. A percentage of peoples experience of being victims of crime is not reality, no matter how high the percentage. |
It is the best possible estimate of what the reality is at a national level.
I think it's astonishing what people will and won't take as reliable evidence, according to what narratives they're wedded to. So, earlier in the thread you're happy to take your own personal perception that crime has gone up (presumably via the rigorous methodology of measuring "vaguely recent incidents you personally experienced or heard about" against "incidents from a while back that you personally can remember"). But a survey of a representative sample of 75,000 people, designed by expert professionals, comparing to data collected over four decades, that doesn't reflect anything about reality at all! | |
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| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 18:17 - May 16 with 267 views | tonybied |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 17:57 - May 16 by jayessess |
It is the best possible estimate of what the reality is at a national level.
I think it's astonishing what people will and won't take as reliable evidence, according to what narratives they're wedded to. So, earlier in the thread you're happy to take your own personal perception that crime has gone up (presumably via the rigorous methodology of measuring "vaguely recent incidents you personally experienced or heard about" against "incidents from a while back that you personally can remember"). But a survey of a representative sample of 75,000 people, designed by expert professionals, comparing to data collected over four decades, that doesn't reflect anything about reality at all! |
I'm not saying it doesn't reflect reality, I'm saying it's not reality. There's a difference between the two things. You could take 2 surveys asking 75,000 people their feelings on crime and then their experience of crime, I'm pretty sure the questions on their feelings would bring similar results between the two surveys but their experience could be wildly different. It's very dependent on the people you ask and also their honesty when talking about crime. | | | |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 19:09 - May 16 with 238 views | WD19 |
| Crime: perceptions divorced from reality? on 15:56 - May 16 by tonybied |
Is it not kind of presumptive to survey 0.1% of the population and then state crime is decreasing based on the results. This maybe massive survey compared to others but it's a tiny sample compared to the total population.
The only true way to know if crime really is falling is to study police figures, but if the baseline on how these stats is being changed by the governors of this information all the time we don't have a true datum to compare to do we? [Post edited 16 May 15:58]
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