Are falling crime rates real? Salvation Army looks at data
Thu 12 Feb 2015
The Salvation Army's 2015 State of the Nation report raises questions about drops in the recorded crime rate. The report, A Mountain all can ...
The Salvation Army's 2015 State of the Nation report raises questions about drops in the recorded crime rate.
The report, A Mountain all can climb: A State of the Nation report from the Salvation Army notes the drop in overall recorded crime in the past few years:
"Recorded crime for the year to 30 June 2014 fell a further 3% in terms of the total number of offences to 353,564 offences. This decline follows a 7% decline the previous year and means that recorded crime was 20% lower during 2013/14 than it was five years ago (in 2008/09), when there were 442,540 recorded offences. The most recent crime figures are the lowest number of recorded offences in nearly 30 years.26" (p.35)
The rate of recorded violent crime has also dropped, but less dramatically. Under the heading Are falling crime rates real? the report says,
"It is difficult to know if the falling rates of recorded offences in New Zealand are a result of falling rates of offending, changing reporting behaviours by victims of crime, or changing recording practices of the Police. It is certainly the case that recorded offences are the tip of the iceberg of actual crime, and because of this, we currently have no way of knowing what is driving the apparent fall in crime.
The most recently published data on victimisation from crime is from the 2009 Crime and Safety Survey, which was undertaken by the Ministry of Justice and published in late 2010.45 This survey of 6106 people suggests that only about 41% of crime is reported to Police, and of this reported crime the Police choose to record just 32%. Official crime statistics, including the data cited in this report, are from the offences recorded by Police and perhaps represent just one in six of the offences actually committed.46
The reporting and recording of crime is by no means uniform. Some types of offences are more likely to be reported and recorded than others (as shown in Table 14, which is a reproduction the 2009 Crime and Safety Survey). This table shows that nearly all vehicle thefts are reported to and recorded by Police, in contrast to just 12% of burglaries and 6% of assaults.
It makes sense that some types of offences are more likely to be reported to Police and then more likely to be recorded by them. For example, victims of vehicle thefts have a double incentive to report vehicle thefts: to subsequently claim for insurance damage and to minimise any criminal or civil liability caused by the offender whilst driving the vehicle.
Other offences, such as shoplifting and theft from businesses, are also more likely to be reported; in part, for insurance claims, and because the knowledge of the offence may occur at the same time as the offender is apprehended. For example, when a shoplifter or employee is caught. Furthermore, prosecution, or at least reporting such offending to the Police, may act as deterrent to further offending.
Motivation, or rather lack of motivation, for non-reporting of offences appears to be more complex. The literature around the subject suggests victims of crime are less motivated to report offences when they fear reprisals or retribution from the offenders (especially in the case of violent offences), or where they have little confidence that such reporting will make a difference. Victims’ sense of powerlessness may be due to past interactions with the Police that were unsatisfactory, or they may have been re-victimised by authorities, perhaps through investigative processes which produced no tangible or worthwhile outcomes.48
Whether or not crime victims’ attitudes toward reporting crime have changed over time can probably best be identified through experience surveys such as the New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey. Results from the 2009 survey and the previous survey conducted in 2006, found no significant change in crime victim’s reporting behaviour. This would suggest that any changes in recorded crime rates between these surveys were due mainly to changes in offending patterns or in Police recording procedures.
It was certainly changes in Police recording procedures that drove up notifications of possible child neglect/abuse to Child Youth and Family between 2007 and 2012.49 Other changes in Police recording practices are not known and appear not to have been reported by them. However, as discussed below, there is some evidence that reporting practices vary from region to region and can change quickly within a police district.
Fieldwork for the next Crime and Safety Survey was completed in 2014, with the results due to be published toward the end of 2015.50 Until these results are available, it remains difficult to identify the factors that have brought about the apparent fall in crime rates since 2010." (pp.45-6)
The author comments, "Official crime statistics are simply administrative numbers generated by a Government agency that decides what to count and what to ignore, and says very little about how it does this. The figures offered in Tables 15 and 16 show sharp fluctuations and disparate trends between regions, suggesting degrees of arbitrariness or perhaps excessive randomness not common in social statistics." (p.51)
The report gives the Government a C- for serious crime and states:
"The slight reduction in recorded rates of violent offending is hardly significant, with just a 3% reduction in recorded violent offending in the past two years. Against such minimal change, the collapse in rates of resolution of such offending is alarming. The home remains the most dangerous place, with a record 60.5% of all recorded violence occurring in dwellings. Despite this, research on the real extent and nature of family violence does not appear to be a priority of those Government agencies claiming some interest in the issue."
The New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse has also highlighted concerns with using Police or other administrative data to monitor trends. Adminstrative data is affected by changes in organisations’ policies and procedures and accordingly, cannot be considered a reliable source of data for monitoring trends in family violence in the community over time. For further information, see:
and
Media
Drop in Child Abuse Stats Not Reliable, Scoop: NZ First, 15.03.2015
Govt has 'dropped the ball' in domestic violence battle - Sallies, One News, 11.02.2015
Action needed on family violence: Sallies, NZ City, 11.02.2015
Image: 3D bar graph meeting by Scott Maxwell. Licence: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Image: Scott Maxwell