"Kirk Gordon" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:

You still don't get it. Let's try one more time. Arson is a crime in the
US,
but it isn't counted in our National Crime Index. Neither are drug
offenses,
fraud, simple assault, or many other categories.

None of them are reported to Interpol; none of them are counted in our
federal Uniform Crime Reporting system. When you see the figure for the
US
of 4160 crimes/100,000 population (2001), as reported in UCR and by
Interpol, IT DOESN'T INCLUDE THOSE CRIMES.

I guess I must have missed something while taking a shower and
washing out my eyes after reading one of Gunner's posts. Arson isn't
reported as a crime in the National Crime Index?

That's correct. It's not in the basic UCR, and it isn't reported to
Interpol. The DoJ goes into a long discussion of why it can't be compared to
our other crime stats in one of their publications, but here's the simple
fact about it, from the 2001 UCR:

"Arson was added to the Index in 1979 by congressional mandate, and the UCR
Program established the Modified Crime Index to include arson. More
information regarding the Crime Index can be found in Appendix II of this
report."

We track it, and there is a special report that includes it, but it's not in
the basic Uniform Crime Report, only in the "Modified" report. Thus, it's
not in Interpol's figures.

And fraud isn't?

Correct.

And drug offenses aren't? Drug offenses?? Right in the middle of a
national war on drugs, we're not even keeping score??

There's no money in the budget to do it. The FBI just tracks what Congress
tells it to track.

They DO, however, track drug *arrests*, which we can assume are somewhat
lower than the recorded crimes. If a drug crime doesn't result in an arrest,
it's probably harder to tell that a crime has been committed in this
category than in most others. Where was the victim, or where was the damage?
That's the problem.

Here are the arrest figures from the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
This is federal:

"Of the 115,589 offenders arrested by Federal law enforcement agencies in
2000, 28% were arrested for drug offenses."

This is the state/local for 2001:

627,132 arrests for violent crimes (murder, forcible rape, robbery, and
aggravated assault)

1,618,465 arrests for property crimes (burglary, larceny/theft, motor
vehicle theft, and arson)

1,586,902 drug-related arrests


And there are similar kinds of selectivity in other countries'
reporting of crimes?

Not as much, and some countries have really extensive lists. Interpol sends
out a questionnaire and the central police offices of the countries fill
them out. In the case of the US, we have nothing to fill in the blanks
except the National Crime Index. Take a look at what Germany reports for
comparison. (I posted the link in an earlier message.)

But we're still spending megabytes of bandwidth to
debate the idea that one place or another has a higher/lower crime rate,
and to argue about how an armed (or not) population does or doesn't
affect all these numbers that we can't compare, standardize, or accept
with certainty in the first place?

I'M not debating it. Richard the dickhead is debating it. There is no
debate. The reports are clear enough that a 2nd grader could see what's
going on. That leaves Richard out, of course.

Ed Huntress