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Crime Stats and a con job

Here's the story (hat tip to Don Kates).

"It is a remarkable con job.

Over the last six months, the Police Executive Research Forum, the chief executives of primarily large police departments, has gotten the media concerned that the country is threatened by a sudden upsurge in violent crime and murder.

A New York Times story on March 9th started the current round of hysteria with the headline that "Violent Crime in Cities Shows Sharp Surge."

An earlier front-page story in January in USA Today caused a similar ruckus.

One wonders whether the reporters ever thought of getting a critical comment for their story.

.....

It becomes a lot less scary when one realizes that the violent crime rate fell for 13 straight years, a total drop of 39 percent, before increasing in 2005 by less than 1 percent.

The Forum even referred to this minuscule one-year increase as a "trend.""

And that's just the beginning.... read the entire story. They use number of crimes rather than rates, hand-pick certain jurisdictions, omit those violent crimes whose numbers and rates fell, etc., etc...

· Crime and statistics