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Dear Mark,
In your BBC1 report (Ten O'Clock News, 27/3/07)
on the 100,000 people who commit 50% of all
crimes, you focused on some big numbers –
"60 million" crimes per year, "3.6
million" people committing crimes, etc.
With the low level of context you provided,
these figures seem meaningless. If you include
people who drive over the speed limit or who
download pirated material, etc, no doubt you'd
get even bigger figures. It doesn't tell us
much.
You could have made it meaningful by showing
trends. For example, the British Crime Survey
shows a massive fall of 8 million crimes between
1995 and 2006 (ie total 11.1 million crimes
in 2006 compared to 19.1 million in 1995).
I've received the strong impression (from watching
BBC crime coverage over several years), that
the BBC is interested in focusing only on perceived
rises and big, shocking numbers. It seems unnecessarily
alarmist. When was the last time you ran a major
piece (on BBC1) on the dramatic falls in crime
since the mid-1990s?
Sincerely,
Brian Dean
[Anxiety Culture]
[Sent 28/3/07]
Dear Brian
Thank you for your mail. We have covered the
trends identified in the British Crime Survey
many times and I have personally made the point
that both recorded crime and adults' experience
of crime from the BCS suggests a significant
fall in crime since its height in the mid-90s.
I can send you numerous examples of stories
I have done which reflect on the fact that our
chances of being a victim of crime are, apparently,
at the lowest level for 25 years.
However, the BCS is not a
particularly good guide to true crime levels.
It doesn't reflect the experience of anyone
under 16 even though 10-15 year-olds are among
the most likely to be victims of crime. It doesn't
cover child abuse and paedophilia. It doesn't
get to many other sex crimes and violent crime
including a huge amount of domestic violence.
It doesn't reflect crimes which don't have an
identifible victim - for instance VAT fraud,
tax evasion, drug dealing and possession, huge
amounts of theft.
VAT fraud costs the economy
about £5 billion a year. Shop-lifting
cost the economy about £2 billion a year.
We convict 80,000 shop-lifters a year. We convict
about 60 VAT fraudsters.
We convict about 100,000
people for TV licence evasion a year. We convict
about 50 people for tax evasion a year.
You are right about context
- I could have done with a lot more time - but
the real context is around the nature of crime
and criminality in Britain not the massaged
and highly partial figures trotted out by government
Ministers.
You may be interested to
know that there are a number of criminologists
who argue privately that the fall in victims
identified by the BCS has more to do with a
change in methodology regarding the weighting
of the data than it does to any real drop in
crime.
Best wishes
Mark
Dear Mark,
Many thanks for addressing my points at length.
You write:
"We have covered the trends identified
in the British Crime Survey
many times and I have personally made the point
that both recordedcrime and adults' experience
of crime from the BCS suggests a significant
fall in crime since its height in the mid-90s."
I appreciate that the BBC (in its entirety)
covers a wide range on crime. But I'm interested
in *headline news* coverage - since it reaches
large audiences (particularly BBC1). I've not
seen a single BBC1 news report which *headlined*
or *focused* on the large falls in official
crime figures (if you know of any I'd be grateful
if you could provide details). Yet many/most
headline or focus on cherry-picked "rises".
This is difficult to prove without going through
hours of footage with you, but it's reflected
in BBC News Online *headlines* on crime, which
can be analysed. Here are all the headlines
on quarterly releases of official crime figures,
July 2004 - January 2007:
"Violent crime figures rise by 12%"
(22/7/04)
"Gun crime figures show fresh rise"
(21/10/04)
"'Violent crime increases by 6%'"
(25/1/05)
"Violent crime 'rise' sparks row"
(21/4/05)
"Violent offences top million mark"
(21/7/05)
"Violent crime shows 6% increase"
(20/10/05)
"Violent crime and robbery on rise"
(26/1/06)
"Robberies up 6% but crime stable"
(27/4/06)
"Phones and MP3s fuel robbery rise"
(20/7/06)
"Robbery continues on upward trend"
(19/10/06)
"Risk of suffering crime 'rises'"
(25/1/07)
Note that *all* of these headlines report "rises"
in crime. In our analysis - http://www.mediahell.org/crimeheadlines.htm
- we compare these headlines with the main summary
points in the official crime reports. The evidence
could hardly be clearer that there is systematic
"cherry-picking" of crime rises in
BBC headlines.
As a further example, if you look at BBC News
Online on the latest quarterly figures - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6297715.stm
- you see the following:
"FROM THE ARCHIVE
2006: Phones fuel robbery
2005: Violent offences up 7%
2004: Violent crime rises 12%
2003: Crime fight 'being lost'
2002: Street robberies soar
2001: Violent crime on the rise
2000: Big rise in violent crime"
So whilst it may be true that the large falls
in crime are covered *somewhere* in BBC reporting,
it's apparent that headline coverage avoids
it in favour of cherry-picked "rises"
(some them are not even real rises, but only
artificial - due to changed police recording
procedures). It's equally apparent from the
official crime reports that the large falls
*should* be appearing in BBC headline coverage
- assuming that the aim of such coverage is
to report the official figures. The large and
consistent falls in many crimes which matter
to the public (burglaries, vehicle crime, etc)
- and dramatic falls in overall crime over the
last decade - hardly seem like minor points
that you'd want to exclude from headline coverage.
Of course, there's an important distinction
to be made between *reporting* the official
crime figures and *challenging* the validity
of those figures. To the extent that BBC coverage
attempts to *report*, it shouldn't cherry-pick
crime "rises" in headline coverage.
And to the extent that it seeks to challenge,
it shouldn't challenge only the British Crime
Survey (BCS) findings of falls in crime. It
should also challenge the police-recorded figures
which have artificially inflated, for example,
the headline violent crimes figures.
You write:
"You may be interested to know that
there are a number of criminologists who argue
privately that the fall in victims identified
by the BCS has more to do with a change in methodology
regarding the weighting of the data than it
does to any real drop in crime."
I'd be grateful if you could supply more details.
Also, why would this be a "private"
matter for these criminologists? Most people
I've spoken to believe that the BCS provides
a far more reliable guide to crime trends than
police recorded figures, since the latter are
affected (sometimes dramatically) by changes
in levels of reporting to the police, and in
police recording practices.
I also remember a time (prior to the BCS showing
falls in crime) when many politicians and reporters
preferred the BCS to police figures, as the
BCS includes crimes that aren't reported to
the police, and therefore presents higher figures
for the crimes it covers. When the BCS started
showing downward *trends* in crime, it rapidly
lost favour with these politicians/reporters.
Coming back to the above BBC headlines, it
seems that the BCS figures are used for headlines
*only* when they show rises in crime (and are
excluded when they show falls). For example,
the latest official crime figures (25 January
2007) show that crime is up by 1% according
to BCS, but down 3% according to police figures.
After the BBC headline-writers cherry-picked
police figures for 10 of the 11 above headlines,
they suddenly decide to go with the BCS figure
for the latest headline.
The social context of this "cherry-picking"
issue includes a public fear of crime which
is out of proportion to the real risk of crime
for most people (eg 1 in 3 elderly women fear
going outside, but only 1 in 4,000 will be attacked
- according to police).
The political context is of a government determined
to implement freedom-eroding legislation on
the basis that the threats we face (including
those of crime) are "spiralling".
Yet the cold evidence shows no such "spiralling".
Of course, the evidence matters little if people
are subjected instead to the above type of scaremongering
headlines on a continual basis.
Sincerely,
Brian Dean
[Anxiety Culture]
Dear
Brian
[...]
Journalists tend to regard their job as highlighting
problems rather than reporting solutions. There
is a concern that focusing on positive trends
is "soft", that we must always be
holding the executive to account on where systems
don't work.
I
have some sympathy with this view, but I agree
that the BBC also has a public duty to present
a fair and accurate picture, not an unduly alarmist
one.
My
aim is to try and change the way we report crime
statistics - so that we don't pretend we can
actually know whether it is going up OR down.
We might be able to see trends with specific
offences, - thanks to better security systems
the risk of having your car stolen has clearly
fallen, for example - but the claim that we
can use the data available to conclude that
there have been "dramatic falls in overall
crime" is unsustainable I think. Neither
the BCS nor the recorded crime statistics get
anywhere near a measure of overall crime and
it might be the people's reluctance to believe
the official figures is a reflection of this.
My
intention on Tuesday night was not to alarm
people with big numbers but to point out that
the claim of a small criminal under-class doesn't
withstand scrutiny. There are no simple "lock
'em all up" solutions.
I
wish I was able to offer you more on those criminologists
who question the BCS methodology. My source
(independent minded) is considering holding
an academic seminar to tease some of this out
at which point I may be able to say more.
Best wishes
Mark
Dear Mark,
Thanks for your reply. Earlier, you said you'd
run numerous stories which reflect that "our
chances of being a victim of crime are, apparently,
at the lowest level for 25 years". I then
challenged you to provide *headline news* examples.
In the absence of such examples, would you not
agree that headline BBC1 news has focused primarily
on crime "rises" when reporting the
official figures?
The BBC would need a very good reason to ignore
trends of falls in crime in headline news coverage.
Is the scepticism expressed by one or two anonymous
criminologists over the official reports of
falls really sufficient? (Particularly given
that scepticism, publicly expressed by criminologists
and others, over "rises" in violent
crime hasn't stopped the BBC consistently focusing
on these "rises" in headline coverage).
You write:
> [...] the claim that we can use the
data available to conclude
> that there have been "dramatic falls
in overall crime" is
> unsustainable I think.
Is it meaningful to compare some hypothetical,
absolute measure of *all* crime (which is practically
meaningless) with the view of "overall"
trends as presented by the official crime figures?
The BBC reports the official figures because
they combine the two most comprehensive datasets
available - police recorded figures and the
British Crime Survey (BCS). A close reading
of the official figures shows that police figures
and BCS findings tend to complement and reinforce
each other (eg when one takes into account changed
police recording practices, etc) - including
categories in which crime has fallen. Indeed,
BBC1's Panorama (17/4/05) reported that the
Association of Chief Police Officers acknowledged
that violent crime had remained stable (or had
fallen) since the late 1990s.
For the BBC to be justified in "cherry-picking"
crime rises from the official crime figures
(in headline news coverage), there would have
to be some comprehensive crime dataset in opposition
to the official data (in ways which support
the BBC's focus on "rises"). To my
knowledge there is no such dataset.
You write:
> Neither the BCS nor the recorded crime
statistics get anywhere
> near a measure of overall crime and it
might be the people's
> reluctance to believe the official figures
is a reflection
> of this.
Most people are acquainted with the official
crime figures only to the extent that they're
reported by the media - which, as I've indicated,
tends to cherry-pick crime rises. So it's unsurprising
that people don't believe crime is falling in
most areas covered by the official figures.
After all, they've been hearing (in the media)
that crime is "rising" on a continual
basis for years/decades.
The perceived risk of crime, for most people,
is taken from the media rather than from personal
experience. Two-thirds of the people polled
by 'Frontline' (a Channel 4 documentary on crime,
4/10/95) said they received most of their information
on crime from TV. The reporter, Julie Flint,
commented that on questioning people about their
crime fears, the majority had no personal experience
of crime, but they’d seen how bad things
"really were" on TV. This is common
sense - we're bombarded on a *daily* basis by
media coverage of crime. Most people are affected
directly by crime much less frequently. For
example, the average house will be burgled only
once every 50+ years.
You write:
> There is a concern that focusing on
positive trends is "soft",
> that we must always be holding the executive
to account on
> where systems don't work.
I suspect this fear of appearing "soft"
is closer to the real reason for the BBC's cherry-picking
than legitimate concerns with the comprehensiveness
of the official figures. We're paying a huge
price for this in terms of a public fear of
crime which is out of all proportion to the
risk of crime for most people. And we're paying
a huge price in terms of the political scaremongering
(in all the main political parties) which exploits
media obsession with "escalating"
crime.
Best wishes,
Brian
[Anxiety Culture]
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