ABSTRACT
We are bombarded by crime statistics in contemporary society. Whether we hear about crime statistics through the traditional media, social media, or discussions with colleagues, friends, and neighbors, crime statistics are everywhere: crime is going up, crime is going down, or crime is higher/lower relative to other places in the country. How reliable is this information that is so freely available? Many scholars are split between those who accept or reject the quantifi cation of social phenomena. This divide may, in part, be because there are those who simply mistrust data and/or data representation. We have all heard the well-known adage from Benjamin Disraeli: there are lies, damned lies and [then there are] statistics (cited in Twain, 1906). This general mistrust of statistics is compounded because of “journalists and politicians, among others, [who] often issue declarations about crime rates, . . . [without encouraging the public] . . . to think critically about what the crime rate measures really are” (Sacco and Kennedy, 2002, p. 92)—Pallone (1999) was highly critical of nightly newscasts reporting on crime. Despite the fact that the media give crime rates so much attention (Sacco, 2000) that may or may not be accurate, knowledge of criminal activities, generally speaking, is important because “[w]e may factor information about crime rates into our decisions about whether we will buy a home in a particular neighbourhood, vacation in a particular place, or allow our children to attend a particular school” (Sacco and Kennedy, 2002, p. 94). It is particularly problematic when academics, politicians, and the media no longer make broad statements regarding general public risk about crime and begin to make inferences from conventional crime rates to personal risk; most often this is an ecological fallacy, an issue in spatial crime analysis that is discussed in Chapter 9 .
