LAW ENFORCEMENT: THERE ARE REASONS TO MISTRUST CRIME STATISTICS

Politicians of both major parties point with pride to declining crime
rates,as shown by official statistics,as evidence that their
enlightened policies are working.There are reasons,however,to doubt
that those statistics really reflect reality.

By the time they are compiled, the statistics are older than is
usually acknowledged. The data in California's 1997 crime report, for
example, were compiled by local agencies and reported in 1995. Yet
they are sometimes used to tout the wisdom of policies put in place
after their compilation.

Nobody forces police agencies to get their reports in to the state, so
there is no consistency from year to year in the number of police
agencies reporting. Criminologists believe an average of 30 percent of
cities in California never report. In California never report. In
California, Oakland hasn't reported for several years. Has there been
no crime in Oakland? The upshot is that it is virtually impossible to
compare crime statistics from year to year with any
reliability.

A fingerprint card is supposed to accompany felony arrest information
sent to the state. When those fingerprint cards do not accompany the
records, those crimes are not included in the report. Some
criminologists estimate this variable to be as high as 40 percent to
60 percent of the records without fingerprint cards.

The criteria for the seven serious crimes included in the national FBI
report have changed over the years. Arson has been dropped and added
again, the minimums for serious property crimes changed from $200 to
$400. It makes it even more difficult to discern valid year-to-year
trends.

The FBI does not maintain a uniform, Uniform Crime Report is based on
reports from state governments, most of which are at least 2 years old
by the time the FBI gets them, and all of which have approximately as
many anomalies as are found in the California reports.

The crime reports do not take into account demographic factors like
the number of males aged 18-25 (the most crimeprone sector)as a
percentage of the general population.

The California report uses sampling to create its estimates -analyzing
45 percent of reportable crimes in 1997, a larger amount than the
previous year. Sampling can be sophisticated and might be necessary,
but it reduces the reliability factor.

According to an FBI Victimization Survey released in September 1997,
based on door-to-door surveys in sampled neighborhoods, only three of
10 crimes are ever reported to the police. Perhaps most of those
unreported crimes are considered too minor to report, but nobody
really knows.

Political pressure to show success at reducing crime may be leading to
fudging. So far this year, as New York Times writer Fox Butterfield
recently reported, there have been charges of falsely reporting crime
statistics in New York, Atlanta and Boca Raton, Fla., resulting in the
resignations of high-ranking police commanders. "In Boca Raton, for
example," Butterfield wrote, "a police captain ... systematically
downgraded property crimes like burglaries to vandalism, trespassing
or missing property, reducing the city's felony rate by almost 11
percent." Philadelphia has withdrawn its crime figures for 1996, 1997
and the first half of 1998 because of sloppiness, downgrading and
under-reporting.

Most of the criminologists I talked to are aware of most of these
shortcomings, but believe that murder is a fairly reliable indicator
(since there is usually a body and the victim usually has relatives)
and murder rates are down. So perhaps crime really is down.

On the other hand, it is possible that since 40 percent to 60 percent
of felony reports to the state do not include a fingerprint card, some
of those felonies might be murders, so the murder rate might be
somewhat higher than state reports suggest. And the fact the Oakland
hasn't reported to the state in three years means at least some
murders don't show up in the state reports.

I would love to believe that serious crime is finally declining. For
reasons I outlined a few weeks ago, I doubt if the Three Strikes law
has had much of an impact on crime rates, but it is just possible that
various factors - a reduction in the percentage of young males, the
peaking of the crack cocaine epidemic, economic growth finally having
an impact on the propensity to do crime rather than go to work - have
led to a reduction in crime.

But it is an illusion to place to much credence in the details of the
official reports. They may be dead wrong.

Checked-by: "Don Beck"