The statistical war over ‘Broken Britain’

The election battle over crime took another twist today. Chris Grayling has reiterated his assertion that violent crime has gone up since 1997. Weeks ago he was reprimanded by the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority Sir Michael Scholar for quoting these statistics on recorded crime.

The reason these figures are of dubious value is because in 2002 the way violent crime was recorded by the police was changed – leading to an artificial inflation of the figures. By contrast the British Crime Survey, which most criminologists and international observers regard as more reliable, shows that violent crime has fallen by 41% in the last 12 years.

Today the Conservatives have released new figures again claiming that violent crime has risen. They asked the House of Commons Library’s statisticians to work out what how much the 2002 change in reporting standards had inflated the figures. They concluded that even if you take that factor out of the equation, recorded violent crime would still be higher today than in 1997.

The reason all of this is so important is that demonstrating that violent crime has risen is central to the Conservatives wider political claim that ‘Britain is broken’. I have just returned from a speech by Alan Johnson in which he claimed that this was an attempt to paint a picture of a ‘Darling Buds of May past’ contrasting with ‘an Orwellian future’.

The problem for the Conservatives is that the UK Statistics Authority continues to believe, as do most independent observers, that recorded crime statistics are less reliable at measuring crime trends than the British Crime Survey. This is not just because the way police recorded crime is collected has changed – but also because not all crime is reported to the police.

The British Crime Survey is far more reliable because it asks a large sample of the public whether or not they have been a victim of a crime in the last 12 months – and these statistics show unequivocally that there has been a significant fall in violent crime since 1997. We are still internationally speaking a relatively high crime society – but one in which all types of crime have fallen over the last 15 years. Broken in some ways, perhaps – but getting mended?

Rick Muir, senior research fellow, ippr