I vote that we get the raw data!

Here's an interesting discussion I found about the difference in crime between the British Crime Survey, which is based on ~47,000 interviews, and Police Recorded Crime. You'll note that recorded crime is estimated to be 50% of actual crime. It's all rather complicated, of course!

http://dizzythinks.net/2008/09/how-is-crime-down.html

Just in case you missed it, hospital admissions due to violent crime rose 30% from 2002 - 2006, while the BCS reported a fall in violent crime.

I blame the computers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7505964.stm

Ah, so now we cannot trust statistics. Wow. I guess there are a lot of agendas out there amongst folk who deal in statistics.

But here's a thing, from personal observation and experience the incidents of crime (and I mean break-ins) in my neck of the woods have remained fairly constant over the past six years or so. There have been some cheeky ones (one time my immediate neighbour had a double axle trailer stolen in broad daylight) but not much change year on year.

So what is other peoples experience of crime in their immediate neighbourhoods?