Crime, Damned Crime and Statistics

The Fundy Post, in a confused state, writes:

Oh dear. In an effort to make everyone, but especially members of our Asian population, feel better about crime, I decided to do some research. So I googled. And sure enough, we score really low on the World murder rankings, just above the Scandinavians, Hong Kong and Japan (which has few murders but interesting ones).

Then I took a look at the total crimes per capita and found, to my horror that we are second from the top, just ahead of the Scandinavians.

Whoops! Above the USA? Above South Africa? Above Zimbabwe?!?

The clue, of course, is at the bottom of the page…

Note: Crime statistics are often better indicators of prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime, than actual prevalence.

New Zealand has the second highest reported crime rate of countries surveyed. Obviously not something to be hugely proud of, but you can not even start to track and fight crime without having accurate reporting. Take a look at the comments section for an interesting view on the actual crime rate, not the hugely inflated “spree” being run by the mainstream media.