“Let me shake the hand…” Ed Humpherson, Director General for Regulation 13 February 2019
Who we are • the regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority • promote and safeguard the production and publication of official statistics • do not produce statistics, and are separate from the Office for National Statistics (ONS)
Our Vision Our overarching vision is that statistics serve the public good What does this mean in practice?
Policing and crime statistics in Scotland • 2010, Scottish Police recorded crime statistics designated National Statistics. • 2014, Scottish Police recorded crime statistics de-designated, quality issues included: • the recording of crimes • the inadequate communication of limitations in the data to users. • 2016, Scottish Police recorded crime statistics National Statistics status reinstated, positives included: • good collaboration with users. • 2019, compliance check of statistics identified many positives : • a wealth of information on the quality of the data • clear presentation of key findings.
Protecting the role of policing and crime statistics in public debate “Vote for the older person, too afraid to walk down their street because violent crime has doubled under Conservative austerity.” Jeremy Corbyn, 21 November 2019 We checked this claim against the best available statistics, the Crime Survey of England & Wales and found that there has been a long-term decline in violent crime since the mid-1990s, with little change in recent years.
Protecting the role of statistics in public debate Jeremy Corbyn continued to make this claim without additional context, despite having been pulled up on it by Channel 4 and Full Fact. Without additional context, the claim was misleading as there has been little change in overall violent crime, according to the best available statistics. We judged that the Labour party had not used the best available statistics to inform their claim. Sir David Norgrove, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority wrote publicly to Jeremy Corbyn explaining that CSEW was the better source of statistics for overall violent crime and making clear that the survey shows little change in overall violent crime in recent years.
Understanding the public good Policing and the types of crimes that police are expected to deal with are changing • recorded crime has reduced, but time spent by police in recording crimes has not • more focussed on the community issues - demands police face are not only crime-related but involve complex social problems that require multi-agency responses Ongoing public debate about policing resources and the demands police face • the public needed to be better informed - statistics are an important tool
Our 2019 review: Use of statistics in public discourse We found: • misalignment between public debate and the available statistics – the current statistics focus only on crime and do not sufficiently support public debate • a lack of public understanding of what the police do and how policing is changing – public debate often reflects the nature of crime, rather than what the police do to solve it • using new technologies, we analysed media stories to develop our findings and additional issues, such as mental health concerns (phase 2 report).
Joining up data We want to move away from this…
…and see more joined -up stories like this
Improving public good – our ongoing role • developing our new five year strategy • extending our reach beyond official statistics • roundtable discussions between producers and key stakeholders on policing statistics • policing review a year on, blog to be published November 2020
“Let me shake the hand…” Ed Humpherson, Director General for Regulation 13 February 2019
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