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When we know that peoples perceptions of crime levels are entirely divorced from reality, perhaps you should spend less time watching Youtube, and more time loo
by vidarh 1y ago
When we know that peoples perceptions of crime levels are entirely divorced from reality, perhaps you should spend less time watching Youtube, and more time looking at the actual stats.
Crime overall is at a low level historically in the England, per the Crime Survey of England and Wales, which track actual victims through surveys.
That's not to say the UK couldn't do much better, but this fearmongering is basically repeating far-right conspiracy claims pushed by the press that are not supported by data including by peoples actual responses when asked if they have actually been a victim as per the Crime Survey.
From The Guardian reporting on Crime Survey numbers for London relative to the rest:
"According the Crime Survey for England and Wales, someone is actually less likely to be a victim of crime in London than they are across the country as a whole. In the capital, 14.9% of people experienced a crime either to their person or their household in the year ending September 2023, compared with 15.7% nationally. But what about different types of crime?"
- selfmodruntime 1y ago> When we know that peoples perceptions of crime levels are entirely divorced from reality, perhaps you should spend less time watching Youtube, and more time looking at the actual stats When we know that police is understaffed and can't respond to all crime, perhaps you should spend less time blindly trusting the numbers. You, too, can't build an argument on unreliable data. Just like the poster you're replying to.
- vidarh 1y agoThe numbers I'm referring to are from the Crime Survey for England and Wales which surveys people rather than rely on crime reports, so police staffing is entirely irrelevant to these numbers. This was literally pointed out in the comment you replied to.
- selfmodruntime 1y agoPeople are inherently unstrustworthy sources of such data.
- danaris 1y agoSo if "people's experiences" are an untrustworthy source of data and "official figures" are an untrustworthy source of data pray tell us just what could possibly be a trustworthy source of data?? "Go outside and look for yourself" that's people's experiences
- johnisgood 1y agoI think the problem here is N = 1..4 or whatever. The issue is there, they were just there at a time where these people who are snatching weren't there. 18 phone snatching per day on one street, but not at all hours, and not on all streets. It varies. But yeah, we want people's experiences. Maybe some of these people on HN did not experience it. Perhaps they could ask their friends and the friends of their friends.
- vidarh 1y agoThe Crime Survey carries out large-scale surveys of a sample of 75,000 households. It's not some dinky little opinion poll. It's not going to be perfect, but it gives a very solid snapshot of peoples experience with crime without the massive distortion we know we get from looking at similar sized samples asked what they think crime levels are.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> The Crime Survey carries out large-scale surveys of a sample of 75,000 households. It's not some dinky little opinion poll. So? Sample size only addresses sampling error, not nonsampling error, for nonsampling error its exactly as bad as the dinkiest little poll on the same topic (and for sampling error, it's not much better; polls are the sizes they typically are because it doesn't actually take a very large scale to be fairly reliable when you only consider sampling error, and, again, adding more size doesn't help at all against nonsampling error.)
- foldr 1y ago