Police crime figures lose official status over claims of fiddling
Lies, damn lies and statistics. Still in the meantime where do we get reliable data on rural crime from? Or are UK Stats Authority being too sniffy? This article tells us:
The gold-standard “national statistics” status has been withdrawn from police recorded crime figures following repeated allegations that some of the quarterly published figures have been subject to “a degree of fiddling”.
The UK Statistics Authority said it had taken the decision as a result of “accumulating evidence” that the underlying data on crimes recorded by the police may be unreliable.
It follows high-profile concerns over the integrity of the police crime figures raised by the Commons home affairs and public administration select committees. Her Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary, Tom Winsor, who is to report later this year on the issue, has said he expects to find “a degree of fiddling, some of it owing to dishonesty” among the 43 police forces in England and Wales. Winsor, however, has ruled out “institutional corruption” behind the inaccurate recording of crime by the police