Our thanks to Alan for this, it takes up the remainder of this blog piece:
Mike, see this story:
Influencers radicalising boys in ‘terrifying’ way, say police – BBC News
‘The wide-ranging report by the NPCC and College of Policing published on Tuesday said violence against women and girls had reached “epidemic” levels.’
The report is quite bizarre in its approach which flies in the face of the evidence. What Andrew Tate and Influencers have to do with it is baffling but if they really think he has an effect perhaps they should be congratulating him as the crimes concerned are all declining. Not that you would realise that from the headline or even the report itself.
“Violence against women and girls is at such a scale that it cannot be addressed through law enforcement alone. 1 in 20 people are estimated to be perpetrators of VAWG per year, [J4MB: These ‘people’ will of course include female perpetrators of violence against both men and women.] with the actual number thought to be significantly higher.”
“Women’s Aid agree that violence against women and girls is a national threat, and echoes calls for a whole-system approach to tackling the problem and centres the most marginalised. This includes coordination between the criminal justice system, the government, and experts, and enhanced training and education, delivered by specialist services, to those working in statutory services like the police. Without meaningful collaboration and action, women and children will continue to be failed when it comes to be protected and when seeking justice for the abuse they have endured.”
Let’s contrast those statements with the British crime survey.
Crime in England and Wales – Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)
- Total crime down 18% since 2020
- Only 1.23% of Households have experienced violence
- Violent crime 28% lower since 2020
- Domestic abuse 6.1% Lower than 2020
No significant change in sexual offences (for some reason the latest report by the ONS does not give changes since 2020 for this category) It looks like there was a small increase from 2020 but decreases from 2022 especially rape.
You might ask why the National Police Chiefs’ Council would be promoting the idea there is an epidemic of violence against women when the evidence is that violence of all sorts including against women is decreasing. Is spreading unfounded fears and lack of faith in the police in the public interest? You might also ask what the report is based on. The answer of course is the police’s own statistics which are notoriously subject to changes in reporting policies, priorities and other distortions. The ONS says:
“There are also concerns about the quality of (police) recording, and that crime is not recorded consistently across police forces or over time.”
In reality the police can choose what to record and therefore produce whatever trend they want.
The quality of analysis and impartiality of the report can be judged by this statement which remarkably begins the executive summary:
“Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) is a strategic national threat, which has a devastating and long-term impact on the public (disproportionately so on women and girls).“
It’s a strategic national threat which is at its lowest level since 2005 and most likely the lowest ever (I can’t access earlier datasets) and Violence against Women and Girls disproportionately affects women and girls! would you believe it they will be telling us later that crime against the elderly disproportionately affects the elderly or shop lifting disproportionately affects shop keepers. I couldn’t write a sentence like that except as a joke.
I wouldn’t normally read past such an asinine statement but there was another grossly misleading statement that caught my eye in the executive summary:
“VAWG has devastating consequences. In the 12 months up to March 2023, 1 in every 6 homicides were domestic abuse related.”
That’s 100 murders out of 590 and at least some of these will be of men but why bring murder into a report on an ‘epidemic’ of VAWG when men are far more likely to be murdered than women (roughly 3 times) and when the murder rate is declining and is now almost half the rate it was in 2003? Shouldn’t we be congratulating the police on the falling number of murders and focus the rate for all murders further rather than focusing on a minority of them? Perhaps we should be reassuring women that the chances of them being murdered are minuscule.
Alan
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