Oh dear, it seems the Daily Telegraph needs a refresher course in statistics…
More than one crime in five in London is now committed by a foreign national, raising fresh fears over the impact of immigration.
Around a third of all sex offences and a half of all frauds in the capital are carried out by non-British citizens.
Poles, who have entered Britain in record numbers since they joined the European Union in 2004, committed 2,310 crimes in the first six months of this year to become the most prolific offenders.
Romanians, whose country became part of the EU in January, committed more than 1,000 offences — an eightfold rise on the same period in 2006, according to Metropolitan Police figures for solved crimes.
Ah, look, this is the data for ‘solved crimes’ not all crime, i.e. that committed and reported but not solved, so immediately these figures are questionable. It could be that foreign nationals are committing lots of crimes, or it could be simply that the Met is particularly good at solving crimes committed by foreign nationals, which could mean that these crimes get extra resources or that there’s just a smaller pool of potential criminals to target and that their nationality narrows the field down even further.
To ‘help’ matters, the Telegraph chucks in a Daily Mail-style table of the ‘worst offenders’…
And now the problems with this data becomes even more apparent, especially if you start comparing this table to the Met’s own crime figures.
So, for violent crimes, the top twenty list above weigh in with a total of 3812 offences, while the Met’s rolling 12 month figures give a total of 172,734 violent offences from March 07 to March 08 (down 5.3% on the previous years. As we’re only dealing a half year’s figures (and ignoring seasonal variations for ease) that gives us 86,387 violent offences of which these top twenty account for under 5%. So its not 1 in 5, its about 1 in 20.
Of course, this doesn’t include crimes committed by foreign national which aren’t solved, but if the Telegraph can compare apples and oranges to make its point, then so can I to show that their figures are a crock of shit.
Sex Offences? Full year is 8766, so a half year is 4383 and our top twenty weighs in with 263, and we have a figure of 6% and not a third as the Telegraph claims.
Theft and handling is a little tricker – the Met gives figures for burglary and robbery but doesn’t mention handling, while the Telgraph’s copy leads on fraud, which isn’t mentioned at all in either their table or the Met’s stats.
Still, we get, from our top twenty table, 3637 solved crimes while burglaries alone run to 93,894 a year, so that’s 46947 for the half year and a figure of just under 8%, which will almost certainly fall once handling offences are factored in on top.
(via)
