« Lies, damned lies and criminal statistics » : Reinterpreting the criminal statistics in England and Wales

What legitimately to conclude from government statistics relating to the criminal justice system in England and Wales since their inception from 1803 has provoked neither great interest nor much controversy amongst historians. Although the defects of the data are well known, there has been a tendency to settle for using the data as a basis for coming to an understanding of the phenomena they were accepted as setting out to chart. Relying on published sources, Dr Howard Taylor has challenged this consensus by offering a new reading of the data in the century up to 1960. He argues that the data represent not simply flawed though essentially bona fide product but, on the contrary, conscious attempts to mask the suppression of the real levels of criminality, including murder. Approaching the data from a supply side perspective, he claims these ends were furthered at times by under-recording, by consciously ungenerous funding, and by manipulating prosecution practice. It is contended that Dr Taylor's arguments allow insufficiently for the decentralised and disaggregated character of criminal justice policy and practice, exaggerate the significance of adventitious statistical phenomena, and mistakenly attribute premeditated design for outcomes there was both no capacity to encompass and for which there are adequate alternative explanations.