"I think we should consider the possibility that this attempted murder was a hate crime."
"What, as opposed to one of those 'I really, really like you' type of murders?"
- Life on Mars
This week's lecture took the approach of critical criminology, with its stress
on power and injustice as the context for crime, and applied it to the area of ethnicity and 'race'.
Critical criminology focuses on power: the fact that some groups of people hold power
over others, and do so in ways that are unaccountable and unjust. Is
this a useful way of thinking about ethnicity? It's certainly not
true to say that every member of an ethnic minority is less powerful
than every White person. Nor is it true to say that all White people
would discriminate against Asians (for example) if they had the chance -
any more than all Asians would discriminate against Whites.
The point is more about the relationship between prejudice and power.
This country, like many others, has a long history of discrimination
against ethnic minorities: fifty or a hundred years ago it would have
been completely routine and unsurprising to see positions of power
reserved for White people, and to see those people using their power in
discriminatory ways. This is no longer normal or acceptable, but it's
still there in the background - those discriminatory values and practices are part of all of our history.
Because
of that history, the White majority
- on the scale of society as a whole - has a power that ethnic
minorities don't have: the power to discriminate, in ways that have a
major effect on people's life chances. It's not a coincidence that black
and minority ethnic people are significantly more likely to live in
poorer areas - and, as a result, significantly more likely to become
victims of crime, including 'normal' crimes with no racial motivation.
What's more, there is a minority which feels threatened by equality - by
the erosion of the (unjust) privilege which the White majority used to
have - and wants to restore it, if necessary by violent means. Racist
crimes, like violence against women, are very often crimes committed,
not by people who actually have power, but by people who feel they ought to have power - and use violence to make it a reality.This is what ethnicity, and the more-or-less imaginary
categories of 'race', have to do with power and injustice.
Whether it's useful to talk about racist crime in terms of 'hate crime'
is another question; the police certainly think it is. Personally I'm
sceptical; this is partly for the reason given by Gene Hunt, partly
because I think the 'hate crime' label is too general. If members of any
group can be a victim of 'hate crime', then 'hate crime' is purely
about irrational prejudice - and not about power and histories of
injustice. I think losing that background makes racist crime harder, not
easier, to explain - and to challenge.
Thursday 10 December 2015
Tuesday 1 December 2015
Week 10: The age factor
The way we overlook old people and children has two main consequences. Firstly, it means that we overlook the types of crime which those groups are particularly likely to experience. Adults may feel intimidated by fifteen-year-old hoodies, but what age-group is most likely to suffer actual crime at the hands of a fifteen-year-old - to be robbed or harassed or beaten up for looking weird? I'll tell you for nothing, it's not adults. Crimes committed by children against children are a real dark figure, and they're a major factor in lots of kids' lives. Elder abuse is another example: it's a crime that is not so much hidden as completely invisible, except when a particularly scandalous example comes to light.
Secondly - and I think even more importantly - we don't tend to see old people or children as people in their own right, who are affected by becoming victims of crime in the same way that we would be. We may be very kind and caring in the way that we interact with them, we may be selflessly dedicated to protecting and looking after them, but we don't usually think they should have a say in what happens to them - or what's done about it when something bad happens to them.
In this sense, the way that we think about old people and children is an example of a much broader issue, which is central to contemporary victimology. This is the question of who counts - who matters in society, who has rights which are violated by crime. The 'ideal victim' mentality focuses on a group of undeniably deserving victims, but defines that category very narrowly indeed. Feminist criminologists have emphasised that women count: women have rights which are violated by crime, and by lots of other forms of unjust male power (including within the criminal justice system). Different forms of critical victimology, focusing on factors like class and ethnicity, do something similar, asserting the rights of groups which have historically been pushed to the margins. All of these ways of looking at victims say that this group counts, and members of this group should be able to say when they think they've been a victim, when they think their rights have been violated.
Is there a strand of victimology for children, or for old people? Is anyone out there saying that a boy being beaten up for his dinner money is just as bad as a man being mugged, or that an old woman being taunted and slapped by her daughter-in-law is just as bad as a prisoner being brutalised by prison warders?
If not, why not?
Thursday 26 November 2015
Week 9: Compensation
This unit has three main themes running through it. The first, encapsulated in the idea of the Ideal Victim,
has to do with how we think about victims. We've seen how entrenched
some assumptions about victims are, and - more importantly - how
unhelpful those assumptions can be. The second has to do with the criminal justice
system, and how difficult it is to fit victims into it: the victim
doesn't belong on either side of the confrontation between the state (the 'Crown') and
the offender, and often ends up, literally, serving as a witness to her
own victimisation. Following on from this, the third them has to do
with restorative justice, and the broader challenge of taking a victim-centred approach
to crime.
Actual victims - ordinary people who happen to become victims of crime - want, and need, many different things: some victims are vengeful, some are forgiving; some are knocked flat by the after-effects of the crime, some shrug it off; some want to take an active part in the prosecution of the crime, some want to put it all behind them. The only thing all victims have in common is that they want to be taken seriously, listened to (if they want to talk), given support (if they need it) - in short, treated with respect.
Last Friday's lecture involved all those three themes. As we saw, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme is explicitly designed to exclude anyone who doesn't co-operate with the police and anyone with a 'bad character' - which is to say (among other things) anyone who has served a custodial sentence of any length within the last seven years. (Hard luck if you go to prison for non-payment of debts and get beaten up a year later.) Only the innocent and virtuous need apply, in effect.
The other main form of compensation is the Compensation Order, which can be handed down by courts as part of a criminal sentence. This is a vivid illustration of how inadequate the criminal justice system can be when it comes to giving victims what they need. Remember the dark figure of crime: not all crimes are reported to the police; not all of those are detected, i.e. have an offender identified; not all of those are prosecuted, and (inevitably) not all prosecutions lead to a guilty verdict. But it's only a guilty verdict that can lead to the imposition of a Compensation Order. Even when the option is available - and courts are encouraged to impose it when it is there - in practice most sentences don't include compensation, often because the offender would be unable to pay. Putting it all together, the criminal justice system can only provide compensation, in the form of a Compensation Order, for a tiny, tiny minority of victims.
Coming on to the question of respect and victim-centrality: when compensation is awarded, how much should it be? This is a difficult one. Somebody who has had a leg broken in three places, suffering permanent impairment as a result, isn't going to want to be fobbed off with a ten pound note. But suppose a more satisfactory order was made - £10,000, say. (The maximum compensation payable for this injury under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme is currently set at £4,600, incidentally.) Would accepting this level of compensation mean that you were saying the leg was worth £10,000 (or £4,600)? It's not a calculation anyone would want to make. I think we have an instinctive sense of when monetary compensation is far too low, without having a clear sense of what the right level would be. The reason is the message that it conveys - the point of a very low amount is that it conveys a lack of respect. Similarly, research has shown - perhaps surprisingly - that victims don't object to compensation payments being spread out over a long period, if there is no other way that the offender can pay. What victims do object to is not knowing how long the period will be or what the payments will be: in short, they object to being kept in the dark, treated with disrespect.
But even if the payments are scaled satisfactorily and made on time, both the main compensation schemes are wildly inadequate. Victims need respect, which may mean looking at alternatives to criminal justice; and they need support, available universally and unconditionally.
Actual victims - ordinary people who happen to become victims of crime - want, and need, many different things: some victims are vengeful, some are forgiving; some are knocked flat by the after-effects of the crime, some shrug it off; some want to take an active part in the prosecution of the crime, some want to put it all behind them. The only thing all victims have in common is that they want to be taken seriously, listened to (if they want to talk), given support (if they need it) - in short, treated with respect.
Last Friday's lecture involved all those three themes. As we saw, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme is explicitly designed to exclude anyone who doesn't co-operate with the police and anyone with a 'bad character' - which is to say (among other things) anyone who has served a custodial sentence of any length within the last seven years. (Hard luck if you go to prison for non-payment of debts and get beaten up a year later.) Only the innocent and virtuous need apply, in effect.
The other main form of compensation is the Compensation Order, which can be handed down by courts as part of a criminal sentence. This is a vivid illustration of how inadequate the criminal justice system can be when it comes to giving victims what they need. Remember the dark figure of crime: not all crimes are reported to the police; not all of those are detected, i.e. have an offender identified; not all of those are prosecuted, and (inevitably) not all prosecutions lead to a guilty verdict. But it's only a guilty verdict that can lead to the imposition of a Compensation Order. Even when the option is available - and courts are encouraged to impose it when it is there - in practice most sentences don't include compensation, often because the offender would be unable to pay. Putting it all together, the criminal justice system can only provide compensation, in the form of a Compensation Order, for a tiny, tiny minority of victims.
Coming on to the question of respect and victim-centrality: when compensation is awarded, how much should it be? This is a difficult one. Somebody who has had a leg broken in three places, suffering permanent impairment as a result, isn't going to want to be fobbed off with a ten pound note. But suppose a more satisfactory order was made - £10,000, say. (The maximum compensation payable for this injury under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme is currently set at £4,600, incidentally.) Would accepting this level of compensation mean that you were saying the leg was worth £10,000 (or £4,600)? It's not a calculation anyone would want to make. I think we have an instinctive sense of when monetary compensation is far too low, without having a clear sense of what the right level would be. The reason is the message that it conveys - the point of a very low amount is that it conveys a lack of respect. Similarly, research has shown - perhaps surprisingly - that victims don't object to compensation payments being spread out over a long period, if there is no other way that the offender can pay. What victims do object to is not knowing how long the period will be or what the payments will be: in short, they object to being kept in the dark, treated with disrespect.
But even if the payments are scaled satisfactorily and made on time, both the main compensation schemes are wildly inadequate. Victims need respect, which may mean looking at alternatives to criminal justice; and they need support, available universally and unconditionally.
Friday 20 November 2015
Week 8: Victims' rights
What are the rights of victims in the criminal justice system? To answer that question, we need to ask: what is the role
of victims in the criminal justice system? (If a victim has no other
role than providing evidence, then victims' rights are the same as
rights for witnesses.) And to answer that question...
Let's pause for a song (music optional):
Then, at some unspecified time, things changed: disputes between people were no longer sorted out by the people themselves, but had to be decided in accordance with the law. Did John Potts have the right to graze his animals by the vicarage? Were they even his in the first place - could he prove it? All of a sudden, any dispute could end up in the courts, where it would be decided according to laws backed by the authority of the government. In the process the role of the victim changed dramatically, from being at the centre of the conflict to merely being a witness to the crime.
All of this happened... in the past; some time before the nineteenth century, let's say. Dates are a bit sketchy. What we do know is that the police took over the responsibility of mounting criminal prosecutions, in Britain, some time in the first half of the nineteenth century, and that as a result a lot more prosecutions took place. We also know that, before the police got involved, prosecutions were very often dropped or settled amicably - which may not produce consistency between different offences, but does give a much bigger role to the victim.
A series of reforms, culminating in the creation of the Crown Prosecution Service in 1982, continued this process of standardisation, formalisation and centralisation, bringing consistency to criminal trials but reducing the role of the victim. However, by 1982 - the high water mark of this process - the contemporary movement for the recognition of victims' rights was already growing. Since that time, there has been a drive to bring victims back into the process, most successfully in the form of victim impact statements.
The problem with a lot of the victim-focused reforms we've seen is that governments see victims bureaucratically: a victim of crime, in this way of thinking, is someone who has accessed services designed for victims of crime (services operated by the police, the courts, the probation services...). Once the machinery of those services has been set in motion, the thinking goes, the victim should have the right to expect a certain level of service from it, e.g. the right to make a statement about the impact of the crime or the right to receive information about an offender's release from prison.
This approach is basically a good thing - it's better than not having the right to make a statement about the impact of the crime, after all. But it has its own problems. The key point is that this approach involves the criminal justice system looking at victims from the perspective of the system - not from victims' own perspective. This means that it's possible to reform the system so that it does more for victims, but only by improving or adding to what it already does.
If victims are sidelined by the system - if the system is letting victims down for structural reasons - you can't fix that by bolting on a bit of victim-centrality. If victims are to get what they want, a fresh start may be needed - which is where restorative justice shows a lot of potential.
Let's pause for a song (music optional):
Whose pigs are these?How did the criminal justice system get started? Once upon a time, there were no courts and no trials; when people had problems with one another, they sorted them out face to face. The vicar would have a word with John Potts, and they'd come to some arrangement: he'd keep his animals in his own garden, or the vicar would let him graze them by the vicarage on Mondays, or whatever. (Other livestock - and other religious institutions - are available!) The thing is, there would be no laws being broken and no general principles being decided, and nobody would end up with a criminal record.
Whose pigs are these?
They are John Potts',
I can tell them by their spots,
And I found them in the vicarage garden.
- traditional
Then, at some unspecified time, things changed: disputes between people were no longer sorted out by the people themselves, but had to be decided in accordance with the law. Did John Potts have the right to graze his animals by the vicarage? Were they even his in the first place - could he prove it? All of a sudden, any dispute could end up in the courts, where it would be decided according to laws backed by the authority of the government. In the process the role of the victim changed dramatically, from being at the centre of the conflict to merely being a witness to the crime.
All of this happened... in the past; some time before the nineteenth century, let's say. Dates are a bit sketchy. What we do know is that the police took over the responsibility of mounting criminal prosecutions, in Britain, some time in the first half of the nineteenth century, and that as a result a lot more prosecutions took place. We also know that, before the police got involved, prosecutions were very often dropped or settled amicably - which may not produce consistency between different offences, but does give a much bigger role to the victim.
A series of reforms, culminating in the creation of the Crown Prosecution Service in 1982, continued this process of standardisation, formalisation and centralisation, bringing consistency to criminal trials but reducing the role of the victim. However, by 1982 - the high water mark of this process - the contemporary movement for the recognition of victims' rights was already growing. Since that time, there has been a drive to bring victims back into the process, most successfully in the form of victim impact statements.
The problem with a lot of the victim-focused reforms we've seen is that governments see victims bureaucratically: a victim of crime, in this way of thinking, is someone who has accessed services designed for victims of crime (services operated by the police, the courts, the probation services...). Once the machinery of those services has been set in motion, the thinking goes, the victim should have the right to expect a certain level of service from it, e.g. the right to make a statement about the impact of the crime or the right to receive information about an offender's release from prison.
This approach is basically a good thing - it's better than not having the right to make a statement about the impact of the crime, after all. But it has its own problems. The key point is that this approach involves the criminal justice system looking at victims from the perspective of the system - not from victims' own perspective. This means that it's possible to reform the system so that it does more for victims, but only by improving or adding to what it already does.
If victims are sidelined by the system - if the system is letting victims down for structural reasons - you can't fix that by bolting on a bit of victim-centrality. If victims are to get what they want, a fresh start may be needed - which is where restorative justice shows a lot of potential.
Friday 13 November 2015
Week 7: Victims, law and politics
Over the next few weeks we're going to be looking at how the criminal justice system lets victims down, and what has been done to stop it happening.
Essentially there are three ways that victims are failed by the system, one of which doesn't really qualify:
Institutional bias is a way of describing what happens when people systematically do their jobs badly. Certain kinds of victim consistently don't get adequate protection from the police, or adequate attention in the courts; certain kinds of crime consistently aren't taken seriously enough, or aren't even seen as being crimes. For obvious reasons, institutional bias often follows the same pattern as existing biases in society - sexism, racism etc - but there's more to it than that. Few people would say that society is generally prejudiced against children or old people, for instance - but being too old or too young can make it very difficult to be taken seriously as a victim of crime.
Structural flaws, finally, are what is at issue when the system works badly even when it’s working well: in other words, when the system is being asked to do something it can't really do. Where victims of crime are concerned, this is an open question: perhaps the criminal justice can give victims everything they want. Or perhaps not - which is what we're looking at over these next few weeks.
This week we went through a whole series of victim-oriented laws, most of them passed under the New Labour government of 1979-90, which aimed to give victims what they wanted, and to 'rebalance the system' in the favour of victims. There was some genuine progress in addressing institutional biases (particularly with regard to young people and victims of sexual assault) as well as some constructive efforts to address structural flaws (especially in the area of compensation). But overall the balance sheet is disappointing: the Labour government seemed more concerned with using the plight of victims to justify its own crime policies. The Coalition government was a lot less hyperactive on the legislative front, but no better in terms of a consistent focus on victims: once again victims of crime became a political football, this time used in the government's battle against human rights. Another law for victims of crime is promised shortly.
If we can't fix the shortcomings of the criminal justice system by passing a law in favour of victims, will it be any more useful to give victims rights, which can be asserted within the system? More on that next week.
Essentially there are three ways that victims are failed by the system, one of which doesn't really qualify:
- individual shortcomings
- institutional biases
- structural flaws
Institutional bias is a way of describing what happens when people systematically do their jobs badly. Certain kinds of victim consistently don't get adequate protection from the police, or adequate attention in the courts; certain kinds of crime consistently aren't taken seriously enough, or aren't even seen as being crimes. For obvious reasons, institutional bias often follows the same pattern as existing biases in society - sexism, racism etc - but there's more to it than that. Few people would say that society is generally prejudiced against children or old people, for instance - but being too old or too young can make it very difficult to be taken seriously as a victim of crime.
Structural flaws, finally, are what is at issue when the system works badly even when it’s working well: in other words, when the system is being asked to do something it can't really do. Where victims of crime are concerned, this is an open question: perhaps the criminal justice can give victims everything they want. Or perhaps not - which is what we're looking at over these next few weeks.
This week we went through a whole series of victim-oriented laws, most of them passed under the New Labour government of 1979-90, which aimed to give victims what they wanted, and to 'rebalance the system' in the favour of victims. There was some genuine progress in addressing institutional biases (particularly with regard to young people and victims of sexual assault) as well as some constructive efforts to address structural flaws (especially in the area of compensation). But overall the balance sheet is disappointing: the Labour government seemed more concerned with using the plight of victims to justify its own crime policies. The Coalition government was a lot less hyperactive on the legislative front, but no better in terms of a consistent focus on victims: once again victims of crime became a political football, this time used in the government's battle against human rights. Another law for victims of crime is promised shortly.
If we can't fix the shortcomings of the criminal justice system by passing a law in favour of victims, will it be any more useful to give victims rights, which can be asserted within the system? More on that next week.
Friday 6 November 2015
Week 5: Victims in the criminal justice system
How does the criminal justice system - police, courts, probation, prisons - let victims down?
We can answer this question in two ways. In principle, firstly, there are three ways that criminal justice system agencies can fail victims:
So far, so abstract. The second way of answering the question is by asking another one: what role do victims have in the criminal justice system?
The police, firstly, have a huge range of functions, but two of the main ones are detecting crime and preventing crime. To detect crime they are utterly dependent on victims of crime: most 'incidents' are reported to them by victims. Historically the police have taken a very selective approach to recording crime, although over the last decade this has changed: the police are now supposed to record a crime every time a victim reports one, unless they have evidence that no crime has taken place. Controversy still surrounds police recorded crime figures, with recent allegations that up to 25% of reported sexual assaults were left unrecorded. The police can be seen as a 'gatekeeper' to the criminal justice system - and by failing to record particular crimes, they effectively keep the victims of those crimes out of the system.
As for preventing crime, it's impossible to prevent crime completely - and, when a crime is committed, there's always room for debate as to whether it was the police's responsibility to stop it. But, when a potential victim calls the police and has no response, or when a serious offender is free to reoffend undetected under another name or in another place, we can say that the victim has been failed.
As for the courts, it can be argued that they fail victims of crime all the time. The police took over the responsibility of mounting criminal prosecutions, in Britain, some time in the first half of the nineteenth century, and as a result a lot more prosecutions took place. Before that time, prosecutions were very often dropped or settled amicably - which, clearly, gives a much bigger role to the victim. A series of reforms, culminating in the creation of the Crown Prosecution Service in 1982, continued this process, standardising criminal trials but reducing the role of the victim.
So there's a real argument that victims are failed by the courts every time a crime goes to court - although, as I said at the outset, it's not always easy to identify actual examples of this happening. And, if the court system is structurally unfriendly to victims in general, it's also possible that it's more unfriendly to some victims than others: women, in particular, often suffer institutional bias within the court.
How to address these problems - by passing laws to make sure that the system gives victims what they want? By giving victims more rights, guaranteeing a certain level of service? Or by stepping outside the entire criminal justice framework and thinking 'restorative'?
We can answer this question in two ways. In principle, firstly, there are three ways that criminal justice system agencies can fail victims:
- individual failings: people doing their jobs badly (one corrupt police officer, one judge falling asleep in court)
- institutional bias: agencies working badly in ways that systematically affect particular groups or victims of particular crimes (Black youth being harassed by the police, rape defendants being acquitted disproportionately often)
- structural failings: people suffering as a result of the system working normally, without any individual failings or institutional bias (traumatised victims being left unsupported, rape victims suffering 'secondary victimisation' in court)
So far, so abstract. The second way of answering the question is by asking another one: what role do victims have in the criminal justice system?
The police, firstly, have a huge range of functions, but two of the main ones are detecting crime and preventing crime. To detect crime they are utterly dependent on victims of crime: most 'incidents' are reported to them by victims. Historically the police have taken a very selective approach to recording crime, although over the last decade this has changed: the police are now supposed to record a crime every time a victim reports one, unless they have evidence that no crime has taken place. Controversy still surrounds police recorded crime figures, with recent allegations that up to 25% of reported sexual assaults were left unrecorded. The police can be seen as a 'gatekeeper' to the criminal justice system - and by failing to record particular crimes, they effectively keep the victims of those crimes out of the system.
As for preventing crime, it's impossible to prevent crime completely - and, when a crime is committed, there's always room for debate as to whether it was the police's responsibility to stop it. But, when a potential victim calls the police and has no response, or when a serious offender is free to reoffend undetected under another name or in another place, we can say that the victim has been failed.
As for the courts, it can be argued that they fail victims of crime all the time. The police took over the responsibility of mounting criminal prosecutions, in Britain, some time in the first half of the nineteenth century, and as a result a lot more prosecutions took place. Before that time, prosecutions were very often dropped or settled amicably - which, clearly, gives a much bigger role to the victim. A series of reforms, culminating in the creation of the Crown Prosecution Service in 1982, continued this process, standardising criminal trials but reducing the role of the victim.
So there's a real argument that victims are failed by the courts every time a crime goes to court - although, as I said at the outset, it's not always easy to identify actual examples of this happening. And, if the court system is structurally unfriendly to victims in general, it's also possible that it's more unfriendly to some victims than others: women, in particular, often suffer institutional bias within the court.
How to address these problems - by passing laws to make sure that the system gives victims what they want? By giving victims more rights, guaranteeing a certain level of service? Or by stepping outside the entire criminal justice framework and thinking 'restorative'?
Friday 23 October 2015
Week 4: Who are the victims?
This
week we looked at what we know about crime victims, and how we know about crime victims.
For this blog post I want to make two points, and tell an old story involving a zebra.
Firstly, our knowledge is incomplete. This is a common problem with social statistics: this is the reason why the news doesn't report the number of unemployed people, but always gives the number of those out of work and claiming benefits. Just as nobody knows precisely how many people are not working, nobody knows precisely how many crimes are committed. We do know precisely how many crimes are recorded by the police, but we also know that lots of crimes aren't - which is why we use figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales. But the CSEW is a sample-based survey - they ask roughly 50,000 people about their experiences of crime, then multiply out to give an estimate of the number of crimes in the country as a whole. So there is no precisely accurate, "God's eye view" figure for the number of crimes that are committed. What's more, because it's a residential survey completed by adults, we know that the BCS is highly unlikely to record crimes against some groups of people: for example, children, dependent elderly people, students living in halls, people of no fixed abode...
Every statement about crime levels should be followed by "as far as we know".
Secondly, crime is highly patterned (as far as we know). And the ways in which it's patterned aren't entirely surprising, if you think about deprivation and social injustice generally. Living in a neighbourhood with "high levels of disorder" is associated with a higher risk of crime. Black and minority ethnic people are statistically at a higher risk of crime than Whites, even if we're only talking about "colour-blind" crimes like burglary. Almost half of all victims of domestic violence are repeat victims, suggesting very strongly that domestic violence is - as feminists say - part of a continuing relationship of unequal power. There are also some interesting and very significant findings about age: sorry to bring bad news, but if you're under 25, your statistical risk of crime is much higher than average, particularly if you're living alone or with other young people.
Thirdly, the zebra story. A man was so terrified of being in a railway accident that he avoided travelling by train at all. Eventually he decided to approach the problem rationally and spent a long time trying to work out ways of making train travel safer. He concluded that his best option was to travel everywhere with a horse, because there were far fewer train crashes when the train had a horse on board than when it didn't. When someone asked if he was happy like that - presumably meeting him coming out of a railway station leading his horse - he said he couldn't help feeling he should have held out for a zebra. The statistics did record one or two train crashes when there had been a horse on board, but none at all involving a zebra.
If this was true, would taking a zebra with you on a train makes you safer? Obviously not - but why not? Similarly, if (according to police figures) 20% of domestic burglaries involve the burglar getting in through an open window, does this mean that leaving a window open is actually safer - since, after all, 80% of burglaries didn't involve an open window? Again, this conclusion seems wrong, but why?
The zebra example is fairly easy. Let's say that 1 in every 1,000 train journeys ends in a crash (the real figure is much lower, of course). Then let's say that there are a million train journeys in a year, and 2,000 of them involve somebody transporting a horse. Then there will be 1,000 train crashes, out of which 2 involve a horse and 998 don't. But that doesn't mean that travelling with a horse is safer, just that it's rarer: the rate of crashes is the same (2 out of 2,000, 998 out of 998,000).
As for the open windows, we need a couple more pieces of information to work that one out. According to official figures, the annual risk of burglary is 2.5% - unless you've got "no home security measures" (which we'll translate as "windows left open"), in which case it's 25%. So 20% of burglaries are from the "open windows" group of properties, but if you are in that group you have a 25% chance of becoming one of those burglary victims. If you're in the "closed windows" group, you have a less-than-2.5% chance of becoming one of the other 80%. (It's less than 2.5% because the 2.5% risk is averaged out over all households, including the ones with their windows open.)
Now, say you're looking at a city of 4,000,000 households (imaginary figure). In any one year, 2.5% of them will be burgled: there will be 100,000 burglaries (ignoring repeat burglaries for the time being). 20,000 of those burglaries will be of households with open windows (20% of 100,000 = 20,000). But we also know that households with open windows had a 25% risk of being burgled - and that tells us that, overall, there are only 80,000 households in the city which leave their windows open. (There's a joke here about how many of those are in Fallowfield, but I won't stoop to it.) This is the crucial missing piece of information: 20% of burglaries are of households with an open window even though there are very few of them. 20% of burglaries occur in 2% of households (80,000 / 4,000,000 = 0.02 = 2%). The other 98% have a risk of burglary which is even lower than 2.5%; in fact it's just slightly over 2% (80,000 / 3,920,000 = 0.204 = 2.04%).
In the horse/zebra example, the numbers look so different because a single rate (of train crashes) is applied to two very different populations (the number of train journeys on one hand, the much smaller number of journeys involving a horse on the other). The 'open window' example is more complex because there are two different rates: a low rate for a very large population, a much higher rate for a very small one.
Why does all this matter? It matters because we need to know the underlying numbers in order to make sense of the statistics - and making sense of the statistics is vital if we're going to get an accurate picture of questions of power, injustice and social exclusion in our society. Suppose you hear that 5,000 Romanians have entered Britain in the past year: what does that mean? Is it a lot? Is it ten times as much as the previous year, or half as much? ten times as many Romanians as Poles, or half as many? Or suppose you hear that 100 Manchester residents of Asian origin were arrested for shoplifting in the past year, but only 20 Chinese - does this tell you that the Chinese population of Manchester is five times as law-abiding as the Asian population? If not, why not?
PS According to Manchester City Council, the main ethnic groups in Manchester are as follows:
For this blog post I want to make two points, and tell an old story involving a zebra.
Firstly, our knowledge is incomplete. This is a common problem with social statistics: this is the reason why the news doesn't report the number of unemployed people, but always gives the number of those out of work and claiming benefits. Just as nobody knows precisely how many people are not working, nobody knows precisely how many crimes are committed. We do know precisely how many crimes are recorded by the police, but we also know that lots of crimes aren't - which is why we use figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales. But the CSEW is a sample-based survey - they ask roughly 50,000 people about their experiences of crime, then multiply out to give an estimate of the number of crimes in the country as a whole. So there is no precisely accurate, "God's eye view" figure for the number of crimes that are committed. What's more, because it's a residential survey completed by adults, we know that the BCS is highly unlikely to record crimes against some groups of people: for example, children, dependent elderly people, students living in halls, people of no fixed abode...
Every statement about crime levels should be followed by "as far as we know".
Secondly, crime is highly patterned (as far as we know). And the ways in which it's patterned aren't entirely surprising, if you think about deprivation and social injustice generally. Living in a neighbourhood with "high levels of disorder" is associated with a higher risk of crime. Black and minority ethnic people are statistically at a higher risk of crime than Whites, even if we're only talking about "colour-blind" crimes like burglary. Almost half of all victims of domestic violence are repeat victims, suggesting very strongly that domestic violence is - as feminists say - part of a continuing relationship of unequal power. There are also some interesting and very significant findings about age: sorry to bring bad news, but if you're under 25, your statistical risk of crime is much higher than average, particularly if you're living alone or with other young people.
Thirdly, the zebra story. A man was so terrified of being in a railway accident that he avoided travelling by train at all. Eventually he decided to approach the problem rationally and spent a long time trying to work out ways of making train travel safer. He concluded that his best option was to travel everywhere with a horse, because there were far fewer train crashes when the train had a horse on board than when it didn't. When someone asked if he was happy like that - presumably meeting him coming out of a railway station leading his horse - he said he couldn't help feeling he should have held out for a zebra. The statistics did record one or two train crashes when there had been a horse on board, but none at all involving a zebra.
If this was true, would taking a zebra with you on a train makes you safer? Obviously not - but why not? Similarly, if (according to police figures) 20% of domestic burglaries involve the burglar getting in through an open window, does this mean that leaving a window open is actually safer - since, after all, 80% of burglaries didn't involve an open window? Again, this conclusion seems wrong, but why?
The zebra example is fairly easy. Let's say that 1 in every 1,000 train journeys ends in a crash (the real figure is much lower, of course). Then let's say that there are a million train journeys in a year, and 2,000 of them involve somebody transporting a horse. Then there will be 1,000 train crashes, out of which 2 involve a horse and 998 don't. But that doesn't mean that travelling with a horse is safer, just that it's rarer: the rate of crashes is the same (2 out of 2,000, 998 out of 998,000).
As for the open windows, we need a couple more pieces of information to work that one out. According to official figures, the annual risk of burglary is 2.5% - unless you've got "no home security measures" (which we'll translate as "windows left open"), in which case it's 25%. So 20% of burglaries are from the "open windows" group of properties, but if you are in that group you have a 25% chance of becoming one of those burglary victims. If you're in the "closed windows" group, you have a less-than-2.5% chance of becoming one of the other 80%. (It's less than 2.5% because the 2.5% risk is averaged out over all households, including the ones with their windows open.)
Now, say you're looking at a city of 4,000,000 households (imaginary figure). In any one year, 2.5% of them will be burgled: there will be 100,000 burglaries (ignoring repeat burglaries for the time being). 20,000 of those burglaries will be of households with open windows (20% of 100,000 = 20,000). But we also know that households with open windows had a 25% risk of being burgled - and that tells us that, overall, there are only 80,000 households in the city which leave their windows open. (There's a joke here about how many of those are in Fallowfield, but I won't stoop to it.) This is the crucial missing piece of information: 20% of burglaries are of households with an open window even though there are very few of them. 20% of burglaries occur in 2% of households (80,000 / 4,000,000 = 0.02 = 2%). The other 98% have a risk of burglary which is even lower than 2.5%; in fact it's just slightly over 2% (80,000 / 3,920,000 = 0.204 = 2.04%).
In the horse/zebra example, the numbers look so different because a single rate (of train crashes) is applied to two very different populations (the number of train journeys on one hand, the much smaller number of journeys involving a horse on the other). The 'open window' example is more complex because there are two different rates: a low rate for a very large population, a much higher rate for a very small one.
Why does all this matter? It matters because we need to know the underlying numbers in order to make sense of the statistics - and making sense of the statistics is vital if we're going to get an accurate picture of questions of power, injustice and social exclusion in our society. Suppose you hear that 5,000 Romanians have entered Britain in the past year: what does that mean? Is it a lot? Is it ten times as much as the previous year, or half as much? ten times as many Romanians as Poles, or half as many? Or suppose you hear that 100 Manchester residents of Asian origin were arrested for shoplifting in the past year, but only 20 Chinese - does this tell you that the Chinese population of Manchester is five times as law-abiding as the Asian population? If not, why not?
PS According to Manchester City Council, the main ethnic groups in Manchester are as follows:
| White | 66.7% | 347,000 |
| Asian | 14.4% | 75,000 |
| Black | 8.6% | 45,000 |
| Mixed | 4.7% | 24,000 |
| Chinese | 2.7% | 14,000 |
| Arab | 1.9% | 10,000 |
| Other | 1.2% | 6,000 |
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