The HM Inspector of Constabulary has reported that police are almost routinely counting as a non-crime quite vicious cases, including even serious cases of assault or affray.
We had already accustomed ourselves to the fact that police were giving cautions, because it saves them spending time in assembling evidence and report writing. Now we have the situation where serious incidents are not even recorded or investigated.
The recent example of a 17 year old girl who reported rape, and offered her skirt for DNA analysis is a case in point. The police refused to accept the material evidence as they could not access DNA testing cheaply and efficiently!
The result is, of course, that police crime statistics are increasingly unreliable, and government claims that the level of crime is falling cannot be accepted at face value. Any statistics which depend on definition, as well as collection, and when definition is arbitrary, are not worth very much.
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