It only seems like a few months since the biggest “idiots failing to understand numbers” issue was that of crime… oh, for those heady pre-recession days when people had nothing more to worry about than lamenting that crime was a major problem despite it generally not being one.
The latest row, which has unfortunately given ammunition to the ‘all crime stats are lies because my uncle’s neighbour’s nephew’s dad’s dog got STABBED! with a KNIFE!!!’ brigade, is about police forces wrongly classing minor-ish violent crime committed with the intent of inflicting majori-ish violent crime as ‘other violent crime’ (in line with how the courts treat these offences) instead of ‘most serious violent crime’ (in line with how the statistical guidelines say you should treat these offences).
Mark Eaton has an excellent piece on this, using the old stats, the new stats and BCS data to make the point that the reclassification changed nothing significant (not least, because only criminal justice wonks look at these subcategories anyway, with reporters and politicians alike dealing solely in ‘reported crime’, ‘reported violent crime’, and specific types of offence). Hooray for the BBC for hiring him and saving me a job…
Oh good, so that's alright then.
Well yeah. Crime: worth worrying about. Arbitrary classifications that nobody paid attention to anyway being misapplied because they weren't quite in line with the very similar classifications that did matter: not worth worrying about.
"Arbitrary classifications that nobody paid attention to anyway being misapplied because they weren’t quite in line with the very similar classifications that did matter" . . . which roughly translated means governmental authorities either lying or displaying gross inefficiency – oh, hell, so what's new and who, in these smart, sophisticated, liberal times, cares?
I admit, the transcript had me sniggering, but it misses the bit where one of them suggests breaking in an erasing the tape and asks "What can possibly go wrong?"