HOME OFFICE Whitehall London SW1
13
Telephone 01-930 8100 ext
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J K Marsh Esq
Hong Kong Department
Foreign and Commonwealth Office LONDON SW1
Your reference
HKK 14/38.
Our reference
CRI 249/3/99
Date
29 September 1970
Dear Marsh
76
I am now in a position to let you have figures for certain indictable offences known to the police in Birmingham (estimated home population, June 1969, 1,084,230) in each of the years 1966 to 1969. They are given in the enclosed table, together with the number of offences per 100,000 of population and the annual percentage variation in that rate. The offences appear to correspond more or less with those set out in the enclosure to your letter of 28 August.
At the risk of repetition I ought to say again that these figures cannot be regarded as directly comparable with those for Hong Kong or indeed any other country. This is due to a number of reasons, including, in particular, the wide variation in legal definitions as to what constitutes a crime or a particular kind of crime (as you will see from the table, our own definitions have changed within the period), and differences in public attitudes to the reporting of offences, in police recording practice and in the methods used for collecting and compiling statistics. For instance, certain countries count crimes on the basis of "offences known", while others keep a "crime count" according to the judicial statistics of the number of persons brought to trial and convicted. (The basis of the figures for Hong Kong is not clear.) And, in addition to these legal and statistical differences, the figures are inevitably affected to some extent by the wide variety of cultural and social traditions.
After all this, I fear that the figures for Birmingham will be of limited use only. But I hope you will come back if you feel that we can assist in any other way.
Yours sincerely
Sushans.
ENC
наклад
S. W. BENNETT