The League of Shame…

Never mind reported crime, we can make up statistics without waiting for the ONS to validate the Home Office’s fiddlings…

It’s been well documented what a sorry piece of journalism was inflicted on us by the Mail, Telegraph et. al. in their reporting of some international crime hysteria. For those of you fortunate enough to have missed it, the basics of the whole thing are best summed up by the following quote from the Telegraph:

The UK had a greater number of murders in 2007 than any other EU country – 927 – and at a relative rate higher than most western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

It also recorded the fifth highest robbery rate in the EU, and the highest absolute number of burglaries, with double the number of offences recorded in Germany and France.

Overall, 5.4 million crimes were recorded in the UK in 2007 – more than 10 a minute – second only to Sweden.

Even before entering in to the vaguaries of pre and post NCRS crime reporting rates and the way it throws comparative reporting into question (because, well, it’s really rather boring)  it’s worth having a look at Eurostat’s own 2009 study on comparable Crime and Criminal Justice rates across the EU.

It is possible to compare trends in total crime
over the period 1998-2007 for only about half
of the EU Member States.

less than 5 minutes checking the source of the article raises a report which proves there to be fundamental flaws in the article (page 11 of the report goes in to far more detail about exactly why the data shouldn’t be compared in such a way).

Now rather than lie, we get some wonderfully vague statements of method….

Researchers admit that comparisons of crime data between countries must be viewed with caution because of differing criminal justice systems and how crimes are reported and measured.

(from Richard Edwards at the Telegraph, see above for ref.)

or

But criminologists say crime figures can be affected by many factors, including different criminal justice systems and differences in how crime is reported and measured.

(from the aptly surnamed James Slack at the Mail)

But somehow I doubt that sort of statement gets the same level of reader-interest as cute graphics shouting about The League of Shame (Mail, again).

Of course, social reseach shouldn’t (can’t?) be held up to the same level of scrutiny as pure scientific research, simply because of the epistemological debate inherent in answering any social questions, but sometimes a line has to be drawn between valid qualitative assessment and, well, pure unadulterated bollocks.