Criminology is a predictive science. In 2007,
I predicted that UK violent crime would peak in around 2008 13 years after the US peak because the UK began the phaseout of leaded gasoline 13 years after the USA. The data are in. The UK crime peak came in 2006/7. So says
The Royal Statistical Society
- Crime: 58% do not believe that crime is falling, when the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that incidents of crime were 19% lower in 2012 than in 2006/07 and 53% lower than in 1995. 51% think violent crime is rising, when it has fallen from almost 2.5 million incidents in 2006/07 to under 2 million in 2012.
So when was the peak?
ReplyDeleteThe peak of UK violent crime came in 2006/7 (I don't know why they don't use calender years) so between one and two years before the date I predicted.
ReplyDeleteAmusingly, this means that, with hindsight, I now know the peak had occured just before I made the prediction. Since there is a long lag between the crimes and the compilation of the statistics, the peak rate had not been recorded yet when I made the prediction. The fact that it was the peak only became known when lower rates were reported for later periods.