Trust in Crime Statistics

The Reassurance Gap (see last post) had repercussions not only for the police but crime statisticians which are still being addressed. The UK Statistics Authority published an interim report "Overcoming barriers to trust in crime statistics" yesterday. A copy can be found here. It is all pretty dry stuff but of great interest to us who are studying public perceptions of crime and the police - in a similar way I suppose a publication about a misunderstood pond weed would be to certain bio-geographers.

One of my favourite quotes is "The police are more trusted as a source of information than civil servants or politicians."

And without being too flippant that is the gist of the problem. Crime stats in England and Wales have become too politicised and that is the reason they are not trusted. That is the clear message within the report but not one that is properly addressed by the report. Could it be because it is written by civil servants for politicians? There is a high potential that meddling could make things worse. Paragraph 104 does recognise this;

"People’s perceptions about crime are influenced by the anti social behaviour they observe locally. If the notifiable list were to be reduced (paragraphs 75 to 83), then even less anti social behaviour would be reflected in the national crime statistics. Distrust of the national figures might therefore increase."

The obvious conclusion is to include more anti-social behaviour stats and exclude less relevant ones but that does not seem to be even considered.

I will no doubt write more about this report in later blogs I am in danger of going into a rant if I write more now.

Happier Police

Reassurance Policing was introduced as a policing style to police forces in England and Wales to address the problem of the Reassurance Gap. This Gap was the difference between what the official crime statistics showed and what the public perceived to be the case. The public thought crime was rising despite the fact that recorded crime was falling. The Association of Chief Police Officers in England and Wales (ACPO) published a report in December 2001 that outlined the seriousness of the Reassurance Gap to police and how it should be addressed. The solution was to introduce dedicated neighbourhood police teams who would patrol on foot. The report can be summed up in one sentence;

"In short police forces need to demonstrate visibility, accessibility and familiarity and these are the main elements of this report."

In an early draft of an academic paper I wrote "police needed to become more visible, accessible and familiar" only for my supervisor to cross it through and comment " I do not want familiar police." I think he had visions of police officers going round calling everyone "mate" and "luv".

Anyway Sir Paul Stephenson the Commisioner of the Metropolitan Police has recently commented that police officers in his force are now happier. It nice to know in this Christmas season.

At least now when a police officer calls you luv or mate they should be smiling or perhaps even laughing.

Introduction

Perhaps it will be helpful if I briefly explain who I am and why I am writing this blog.

I am a retired police officer from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) in London having done my 30 years. I joined on 20th November 1978, my mother's birthday and retired on 5th December 2008, father's birthday. So as of today I have been retired exactly a year. I was fortunate enough to successfully apply for a MPhil/PhD 3 year research project at the Department of Geography at University College London (UCL) funded by the Economic Social Research Council (ESRC) and my former employee, the MPS as part of a CASE award ( I have yet to discover what CASE stands for). The title of the award is "Real time geodemographics for reassurance policing and crime prevention."

I have spent my first year trying to work out what the title means and to reduce it down to a PhD thesis. Now that I have done alot of reading and learnt a few new skills, I have enough confidence to presume to think I have something different and hopefully original to write. I will obviously be also relying heavily on my police knowledge and experience.