Just a little bit more on violence and recorded crime

I am going to write another post about police recorded crime and then shut-up for a bit on this subject (unless provoked) and write about the geographic clustering of crime, disorder and policing data - the area that I have been working on recently.

Firstly why is the way police recorded crime is collated and classified important to me? I have a tendency to look at how such things are organised and say that's rubbish and try to reorganise things more logically. The end result may be an improvement but will inevitably have caveats and compromises which need to be explained, and basically it is a big job to do. So I am trying to adopt a more mature attitude and work within the given system. You may notice that I have used  Home Office (HO) Crime Type 1 - violent crime against the person when analysing relationships with deprivation. Let me explain the HO Crime Types. If you look at Table 2.04 on pages 31- 35 of this document you will see the police recorded crimes listed. If you really get into the subject you really need to also look at the counting rules here. There are 9 HO Crime Types:

1. Violence against the Person
2. Sexual Offences
3. Robbery
4. Burglary
5. Theft and Handling Stolen Goods
6. Fraud and Forgery
7. Criminal Damage
8. Drug Offences
9. Other Offences

When this list was first compiled, probably over 30 years ago it may have made perfect sense but in that time there have been a miriade of new offences and legislation. The main problem regarding violence is the heiracy of classification gives priority to legislation over whether the crime involved violence. This means that crimes that include violence against the person in their definitions - sexual assaults, robberies, aggravated burglary and aggravated vehicle taking, and others where it is often involved, e.g. kidnapping,  rape, arson endangering life are not included in the first category. More bizaarly for the uninitiated is that the most serious public order offences such as riot and violence disorder are not included in the first category but the less serious ones are (under without injury). This is because the more serious offences are not specifically violence against people but violence against everything. In the same way indiscriminate violence such as bombing  is hidden in the criminal damage type. Terrorism offences seem to be totally excluded. I could go on but you get the message, a review is long overdue.

Charging a battery with salt ...... that must be wrong

I used to earn a few extra pennies writing multi-choice exam questions for police promotion exams. This involved devising scenarios where hair-splitting answers could be suggested with only one being the correct. Police Officers would learn legal definitions verbatim from training school onwards so to catch the necessary 25% or more out in an inspectors exam on questions on one of the more well known definitions such assault required splitting of hairs at almost sub-atomic level. All police officers know that the legal definition of an "assault" is "A person is guilty of an assault if they intentionally or recklessly causes another person to apprehend immediate and unlawful personal violence." Battery " is the actual application of that personal violence, e.g. a slap to the face. Thus the Sherlock Holmes type phrase rarely used these days of "assault and battery". It is therefore legally possible to have an injury free assault, that is, an assault without battery.

In the police recorded crime statistics there is a category within the violent crime section of assault without injury. Over the last 10 years about 200,000 such crimes per year have been recorded, about a third of the total assaults recorded. Now if you thought that the offence being recorded was without battery you would be wrong. Appendix A of the Home Office Counting Rules of "violent crime" that can be found here states that these offences include  "Slap, Punch, or other attack leaving no visible mark or injury or a passing moment of pain." OK fair enough you may say but in practice these include quite nasty assaults because of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) charging rules and the police desire to reduce the more serious violent crime. The charge for this type of assault is "Common Assault" which because it has a maximum imprisonment of 6 months can only be heard in a Magistrates Court. Many of the injuries could fulfill the legal definition of Actual Bodily Harm (ABH) but the CPS will not allow this charge unless they think the likely sentence could be over 6 months imprisonment (very rare) as this can be contested at Crown Court making the process expensive and more likely to end without conviction.

This is just one of many reasons why police recorded violent crime is not what it seems.

10 year low, give credit where credit is due

Just a quick post today that nicely follows on from my post about the dark figure which also discussed the subset of actual crime that is recorded crime.

The MPS announced yesterday that crime is at its lowest level for 10 years. The details can be found here. They omit to include "recorded" in front of crime; an error in my view.

I have a couple of brief comments to make.

(1) Despite the overarching performance indicator being confidence in the police recorded crime statistics are still very important to the police. Probably more internally than externally. It is a performance indicator that makes or breaks promotion ambitions (in theory but probably not in practice). I am not totally against this but it does mean that good "housekeeping" can reduce recorded crime by ensuring only those allegations that have to be recorded are. This is like trying to ring a flannel dry. A portion of recorded crime reduction is due to evermore innovative ringing techniques.

(2) The MPS seem happy to take credit for the lowest level of crime for 10 years. I think this is the wrong approach. The influence police have on crime figures is an area of ongoing research, my own included, with no definitive conclusions. What is known is that crime has many causes a lot of which are out of the direct control of police therefore in my opinion, and consistent with Neighbourhood Policing, a more partnership approach thanking the efforts of the communities in London would strike a better tone.

Credit is what other people give you, not what you try to grab yourself.

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.