Statistics - It Depends Where You Look

In the fall of 2009, Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs made crime reduction a showpiece of her re-election campaign. A recently released 2008 Uniform Crime Report from the New Jersey State Police was cited as proof that violent crime had decreased. Indeed, the number was down from 10.1 per 1,000 of population to 9.9. The mayor also frequently cited the five homicides in 2008 in contrast to 15 in 2005, when she bested former Mayor Albert T. McWilliams in the June primary and went on to win her first term.

But along the campaign trail, when Republican mayoral contender Jim Pivnichny raised the question of a 70 percent increase in burglaries noted in the same report, he was kicked out of the senior center for “campaigning,” although both the mayor and Jerry Green actually did campaign at the same event.

The administration was sticking to “Part 1” crimes – murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults – to brag about the decrease, even though murders went up from four to five and rapes went from nine to 14. Robberies did decrease from 240 to 212 and aggravated assaults went from 232 to 230.

Pivnichny’s point was that non-violent crimes – burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft – affect many more people and their personal quality of life. Burglaries increased from 229 to 390, larcenies increased from 952 to 1,012 and motor vehicle theft decreased from 190 to 138, but the overall non-violent crime rate went from 29 per 1,000 of population to 33.1.

The Uniform Crime Report is a huge document with 24 categories of statistics for each municipality. But somehow, Courier News reporter Mark Spivey, while reporting on recent gang activity and gun violence, gleaned from the document the following:

“Only 11 municipalities in the state had higher violent-crime rates than Plainfield in 2008, the most recent year for which Uniform Crime Reports data is available. The city's rate that year was identical to those of Paterson and Newark.”

If you look into how the State Police rank municipalities, there are categories called “Major Urban” and "Urban 15,” denoting the largest cities. Paterson and Newark are among the “Major Urban” cities.

So Plainfield has the dubious distinction of matching two of the largest cities in violent crime rates.

Some may recall that officials attempted to foist off a 66 percent reduction in homicides as a “300 percent” reduction in crime. As blogger Dan Damon pointed out, that would result in an impossible negative number.

All of this tells us that statistics are meaningless without context, as the author “How to Lie with Statistics” described in his 1950s book.

The lesson is perhaps not to take numbers at face value, but to get the context before embracing an assessment.

--Bernice Paglia