Crime and damned statistics
DOWN my street there's a car that hasn't had a valid tax disc for six months now.
I first noticed it because the driver selfishly pavement parked outside my elderly neighbours' front gate, making it difficult for them to get out of their own house.
After a few weeks, as the pavement parking continued, the fact that this car was illegal began to grate.
After a couple of months my feeling had progressed to annoyance.
It's a fact that cars without tax are often cars without insurance, too.
And the drivers often don't bother with the irksome business of having a licence, either.
So, in the language of my young son's school playground, I "dobbed" on the car.
I did it by banging off an email to the driver and vehicle licensing centre.
There's a page on its website for that very purpose.
Nothing has happened in the intervening time, except that the driver of the car has removed the out-of-date tax disc altogether.
And I'm wondering whether the whole process isn't just a convenient "black hole" where complaints and information can be sent to swirl around uselessly before winking out of existence.
Does my report get logged for official figures? My guess is no.
Is the lack of a valid tax disc for this vehicle recorded as a crime? Again, I think not.
Which means that on an official's desk somewhere, a crime statistic looks a little better today. Nothing has happened.
Similarly, on a visit to Leeds, I witnessed two drunk men racially abusing some young girls.
A couple of streets away, I found two police community support officers, told them what I had seen and pointed them in the right direction.
As the officers disappeared around the corner, it occurred to me that again, as far as the system was concerned, no crime had been reported.
There was no record of my complaint, no crime number, no paper trail, and as a result, one less race crime to be accounted for when the figures come out.
Now we hear from Worthing council that crime has fallen significantly in Worthing this summer compared to 2007.
When you drill down into the detail, you find that it's not actually "crime" that has fallen.
It's recorded crime. And what is deemed "public place violent crime" is down an astonishing 36 per cent.
The council press release goes on to say that "the majority of these incidents are relatively low-level, non-serious incidents," an unfortunate, dismissive but rather revealing interpretation on any crime category which includes the word "violent".
One wonders how many unpleasant, nasty, abusive, alcohol-fuelled incidents have been witnessed or experienced but have not been officially reported or logged, or have gone through channels which, handily, do not result in statistics being compiled.
Instead of congratulating themselves on a questionable reduction of 36 per cent on a violent crime category, perhaps they should be looking at the reporting line and studying its effectiveness.
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Weather for Worthing
Tuesday 29 May 2012
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Light rain
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