I just updated it today. Would anyone care to guess how many men, women and children have been wantonly slaughtered in the last 4 months? Try it, and then go over and take a look and find out how close you were.

It started as an arcane mathematical in-joke and spread from there.

Nodn:

I think you’ll find that the police has a rather more prosaic means of calculating homicide statistics…

…they just count the bodies.

My point still stands- Murder is so unforgivable that the idea that someone senseless enough to commit one would have the sense to admit to it in a survey is one that gives us all hope. If that was possible, it would be nice to think that murder statistics would be counted. But I’ve just thought of a simpler solution. Have a question in the BCS asking if the participant personally knows of anyone in Britain who has been murdered in the past year. Hopefully they don’t, and assuming that, this would still not be a fair way of calculating murder statistics, but it would be fairer than ‘ignoring’ this totally unforgivable crime in something as big and well known as the BCS.

Shhhh! Don’t go giving the buggers ideas.

“Tell us which crimes you have committed in the last year in box A.

In box B, write down the normal sentence for each offence, which you can see from Table C.

When you have worked out your total sentence, please call the Home Office Self-Assessment Helpline. Fines can be paid over the phone by credit or debit card…”

The BCS is a survey of victims of crime, not perpetrators.

Personally, having a close family member who was tragically murdered not much more than a year ago, the pain is still there and will be forever, so I don’t think this should be made into a joke.

Since when did statisticians ever start being able to measure changes? They only ever change their measurements.

You’ll need to explain the logic behind that – you can certainly be the victim of attempted murder and not have been killed but by definition…

…Ah, I see, we’re taking the broader sense of one being a victim due to a loved one having been murdered, which has a sound moral basis but is not a basis for the compilation of crime statistics, which seek to count the number of crimes not the number of victims.

What is the incentive for anyone to accurately fill out this horrendously long , detailed and intrusive British Crime Survey ?

http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=5543

Why should you trust BRMB (the market researchers who used to do the pop record charts) or the Home Office, with such sensitive personal data on, say sexual assaults (e.g. have you been penetrated more than 50 times in the last 12 months ? )

Do the laptop computers they use to administer this survey use whole disk encryption, to protect the data when, not if, some of these laptop computers are stolen or lost ?

Even the huge number of “lifestyle” questions are intrusive and would be of interest to criminals e.g. Has your Home Computer got anti-virus software or Has you home got a burglar alarm etc. ? and to direct marketing weasels..

Here are the hundreds of Questions from the latest 2005 / 2006 survey:

http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/doc/5543%5Cmrdoc%5Cpdf%5C5543questionnaire.pdf

(.pdf – 304 pages !!)

The householder section of the survey would record if any member of the household had been murdered in the last 12 months, if it was filled in truthfully.

However, if you have been a victim of , say, robbery, more than 6 times in a year, than those extra offences are simply ignored.

Most crimes against teenagers are also not recorded.

I’ll get my coat, shall I?

Damn!