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Changing bad news into good
7:37am Wednesday 23rd April 2008
We are bamboozled every day with statistics of all sorts.
As a nation, we must employ an army of people working them all out.
We, the public, are then left to try to make sense of them.
The latest figures to be revealed show that offences involving drugs and violence in Oxford have almost doubled in the last two years.
Just days earlier, police reported that crime had fallen by almost 10 per cent in the city in the past year, with record lows for burglary and car crime.
Public order offences are reported to be up by a staggering 80 per cent and drugs offences by 86 per cent.
But even with these dramatic increases, the police have managed to put a 'good news' tag on them.
The explanation is that the number of reported crimes has gone up because police have been more active, witnessing more assaults and carrying out more stop and searches.
In the past, such crimes would have gone unreported.
The real key to the police success, however, would be how many more people have been arrested, charged and convicted, figures for which are not available.
We should all be pleased to see more bobbies on the beat, and their apparent success in combating crime.
But how much money are we spending as a nation compiling all these mind-boggling statistics?
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