Statistics
Official Crime Statistics Report 30
This report by the Statistics Commission analyses the current crime statistics given and looks at if they meet the purpose they were gathered for, the target audience of the statistics and whether or not the statistics need developing to be of more use.
Title: Crime Statistics User Perspectives Report 30
Author: The Statistics Commission
Series: Crime Statistics User Perspectives
Number of pages: 190
Publication date: September 2006
Availability: Download Full Report 
PDF 571k
The report stems from a review of the official crime statistics that commenced in August 2005 for which Matrix Research and Consultancy was appointed by the Statistics Commission. The review looked at a number of questions:
- Does the public trust crime statistics?
- Are messages about crime being lost in the volume of reports produced?
- Do the statistics produced satisfy the high interest of the public?
The report also focuses on the need for a better measure of ‘Total Crime' and the complications of having to compare lesser crimes with more serious offences. It was also deemed that the comparison of crime trends between England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland were also valuable to show how different regions crime policies were effective, however understood that such comparisons were often technically challenging but believed that increased investment was justified. Statistics available at local area crime level were believed to be being under used so suggestions to make this potentially valuable information available at a greater scale were considered.
A variety of sources were used in the review, but the key sources were an expert seminar held by The Statistics commission, Matrix Research and Consultancy and Keele University as well as a series of analysed questionnaires and a number of case studies and summary papers.
The paper found that a number of issues needed addressing:
- Greater clarity between policy and communication within the Home Office.
- When the Home Office presents its findings to the public it needs to show a clear distinction between the limitations of the statistics and the limitations of performance.
- A clearer definition of violent crime as opposed to crimes grouped under violence.
- The Home Office should provide additional support to the public to help them better understand the crime statistics.
- The Home Office should present the recorded crime statistics separately to the British Crime Survey (BCS).
- The Home Office should produce a planned programme of work in order to make the BCS as robust as possible.
- The distinction between policy customers and research providers needs to be strengthened.
- The possible introduction of a ‘cost of crime' measure potentially using quality of life indicators.
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Last update: Wednesday, November 01, 2006