Will crime fall in the UK before the next election? DRAFT
Following on from Aaron's suggestion, I think that reported crimes is a better measure of crime levels than arrests: on the face of it, if you cut funding to the police then there is likely to be more crime but fewer arrests. Add to this that a reasonable proportion of crimes are dealt with without an arrest being made (e.g. road traffic matters, or any matter where the "necesssity criteria" for an arrest aren't met). Arrests are not necessarily a good measure of levels of crime overall.
To be honest, even "reported crimes" isn't the best measure of it, because I would imagine that it's correlated with levels of trust in the police as well as levels of crime.
Hey! I think it may be helpful to add a very clear metric for success.
Are you referring to the UK Crime and Safety Statistics crime rate? If so, I would suggest adding this into the criteria, so everyone will be able to refer to the same data, and have a binary understanding of whether or not they were correct.
