Thursday, February 04, 2010

"Broken society" not so broken?

A war of words has broken out in the UK. The Tories have been using statistics about violent crime without a caveat. And they continue to stand by them.

The way in which violent crime was defined and recorded changed in 2002. This led to an increase in recorded violent crime statistics. The Tories are touting this as an enormous increase in violent offending - in Milton Keynes, of 236 percent. (Mind you, I would commit a crime to get out of Milton Keynes.)

There are numerous ways in which crime can be measured; court convictions, police recorded offences, victim reports. Not all crime is reported and recorded. Not all crime is prosecuted or if it is, successfully prosecuted. There may be more crimes arising from the same number of offenders. In which case crime may be escalating but not necessarily becoming more widespread.

But for all the difficulty inherent in measuring crime there is no excuse for doing what the Tories did. They would lose my vote on the basis of dishonesty alone.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you mean to say that you would countenence voting for socialists with many prejudices to oust socialists with fewer prejudices?

Dave Christian

Lindsay Mitchell said...

Dave, My own voting options are very, very narrow. I am virtually at the stage where I see no point.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Lindsy. There is no one left to vote for. The Conservatives are socialists in disguise almost, vote them in, and nothing much changes. What is the point? Same here in NZ. National are just Labour in drag.

Anonymous said...

BNP