The Quarterly Crime Statistics for England & Wales were published yesterday resulting in the media stating that the figures had been ‘fixed’ again!
An example from the Telegraph is here…

I’ve no idea whether the figures have been tweaked or not but I do know that crime against business isn’t recorded as such. Crimes against a person or a property are logged in the same way whether it’s a laptop stolen from a house or the large scale theft of IT equipment from a business.

Why is this?

Well, one argument is that “businesses don’t vote but people do” and another is that the Gov’t prefers to keep the waters muddied whenever possible. The impact of crime against business can be huge, even more so in the current climate when unexpected losses could be the final straw for a struggling business.

The Forgotten 20%

Crime against business is commonly referred to as ‘the forgotten 20%’ but this is only an estimate from those in the know. Should crimes be grouped together and reported as they are now or should their be a split between commercial and domestic?