ABSTRACT
Crime statistics are probably given more prominence in public debate than any other numbers apart from the national lottery winners. An orgy of anguished hand-wringing about moral decline regularly greets the annual publication of the Home Office volume Criminal Statistics: England and Wales, as well as the intermediate bulletins from the Research and Statistics Department and the local crime figures in the annual reports of chief police officers. Since the mid-1950s, when the statistics began to chart a seemingly inexorable growth of recorded crime, they have come to be seen as a crucial barometer of the plummeting state of civilisation in the eyes of the media, politicians and the public.
