From:
http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm50/5001/5001-02.htm#c7
2.30 Offences of violence against the person can be roughly divided into more and less serious ones. The more serious ones are those endangering life (see Table 2.14), but the less serious ones predominate in terms of numbers (almost 95 per cent). Over the period 1989/90 to 1999/00 the more serious offences increased at a faster rate (8 per cent a year) than the less serious ones (4 per cent a year).
While the Brits and the FBI have problems accounting or surveying crime and skepticism is always warranted to assertions by those applying ideological filters in interpreting data, serious analysts try to understand what the data is saying and what are the likely errors in those statements. The statement above, taken from an official document, explains why looking at total violence numbers (95% less serious) can be misleading as to the violence in society.
Lambert is right in saying that homicide is a small part of the violence numbers, but he misleads in saying violence is decreasing in England and Wales based on BCS and violence total numbers.
Malcolm may have misspoken on violence rate doubling, but she got the direction right for serious crime.
Phil Lee
