Why? It is a matter of policy. As Chief Inspector Colin Greenwood points out here, the Home Office believes it unfair to brand a man a murderer until he has been tried, convicted, and exhausted his appeals.
As a result, murders that have not been solved are not included.
via Compare US VS British Murder Rates | Extrano’s Alley, a gun blog.
I knew that Europeans played loosey with their crime stats. But this is beyond the pale.
Orwell would be so “proud.”
Hat tip to The Smallest Minority
QOTD for me was: Comparing Home Office “homicide” statistics against the FBI UCR statistics isn’t comparing apples to apples, it’s “comparing apples to meatloaf!” 🙂 Love it!
Bound to become a classic!
I wish there was more sourcing on the higher numbers.
I’ve got one for you…although it’s anecdotal since I’m feeling entirely too lazy to go look up the report link. I read a report from the Ministry of Justice over there. The cover letter of which stated that the stats reported were low because quite frankly, most people view the justice system, it’s judges and it’s cops as a very bad joke. So they don’t bother to report crimes that are inflicted upon them. they just clean up the aftermath and go on about their business.
see if you can find the links. The ones I had have suddenly gone 404. For what I could glance, about 3 million crimes go unreported in the UK