Crime higher than the BCS says?
There's a report in the Guardian quoting new research by Civitas (I can't find the report on their pretty terrible website, I'm afraid) that says the British Crime Survey, already the higher of the two crime surveys, underestimates crimes by 3m offences a year. This is because if a respondent claims to have been affected by the same crime committed by the same person [I've edited this because I've seen it says the same person] more than 5 times, the extra times are not counted.
The numbers are staggering. The total number of crimes in the BCS, according to that Guardian report, are 10.9m (6.8m household and 3.1m person). If 3m crimes are being underreported by because they are the 6th and more crimes experienced by a person, then some people are hit by crime an awful lot.
It can't simply be that 3m people who report 6 crimes against them from the same offender are only put down for 5, as that would mean the BCS records 15m crimes which it does not. It could, at the other end, be that one person is hit by 3,000,005 crimes committed by the same person, and only puts down 5. More likely, and assumedly the real numbers are in the report if I could find it, would be something like 200,000 people are hit by 20 crimes (4m) and only put down 5 (1m) or 600,000 people are hit by 10 crimes (6m) and only put down 5 (3m). Or, I suppose, 1m people are hit by 8 crimes, and only put down 5.
This doesn't presumably, unless being a repeat victim is on the rise, change the trend in the BCS figures. It also, perhaps, might provide some comfort for most people, as it implies the likelihood of being a victim of crime is lower for most people than they probably realised (as the distribution is so skewed). Nevertheless it seems odd there is this 5 limit. I wonder what sort of crimes hit so many people by the same person so many times in a year? Burglarly? Mobile phone robbery [update - probably not if it's the same person committing the crimes]? Or domestic violence? And why don't these people call the Police, or if they do, why don't the Police do anything?
Update: The Telegraph report has some more details, and this Guardian PA story gives some additional figures, whichs shows that domestic violence is a lot (500,000) but not most of the additional numbers.
Labels: crime
posted by Matthew @ 6/26/2007 07:58:00 AM
Comments: 2
