Not funny I know, but the subject I'm blogging about isn't funny either.
I have no readers to address, but if I had any I would advise all of them to read Mark Easton's blog on the BBC website.
He's the BBC's "home editor" which is not a terribly helpful title. If his appearances on the news and the content of his blog is anything to go by, it means he actually produces interesting, relevant and sometimes obscure journalism.
Mr Easton has been following the "Knife Crime Epidemic" story, presumably as part of his job is clearly 'home affairs'- i.e. covering the Home Office, and therefore Jacqui Smith etc....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2009/02/knife_stats_row_the_plot_thick.html
The graph above (mine from the official data) show the number of people presenting at hospitals in England with a cause of injury recorded as "assault by sharp object" from April 2006 (left) to March 2008 (right). You can see it is a downward trend over the whole period.
Over the two years the number of people presenting per month falls from 500 to 400 or 20%! That's not a particularly valid piece of statistical analysis but it is true. The figure from the NHS IC is far more robust, but impressive none the less: knife crime victims were falling in number at 8% per year.
We'll see what the numbers for the summer of 2008 show.
I am going to try and find a source for column inches devoted to knife crime stories in National Newspapers over the same period. I'd like to do a follow-up post with the two data sets plotted on opposite axes with trend lines; I believe it would make for interesting reading.
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