Thursday, August 05, 2010

OMG



I used to be this smart.

More Caption this.

What ever the problem is, apparently it's growing.

Missed it by that much.

Stockwell Day - Un-reported Mime.

Caption This.

Make up a caption in a comment - best one sticks.

I'll start.

One of these days I'd like to leave a press conference with this much credibility intact.

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Unreported Crime to Plummet!

Once "Failure to complete the StatsCan Long Form" is removed from the criminal code.

Truth, Lies and Un-Statistics

According to Stockwell Day, SOME statistics are useful and reliable for informing public policy; those would be the unreported ones. When asked why his government is planning on investing billions of dollars in new prisons during a recession when crime rates have been dropping for decades, Day responded that he is concerned about unreported crimes. Now to be fair, Statistics Canada does collect self reported data on crime victimization - on the soon to be voluntary Stats Can Long Form Survey. It is also true that some 34% of crimes are unreported - a number that has also been pretty consistent for decades. BTW - I wonder if they asked anyone if they were victims of homicide?

While the reporters present had some probing questions on what statistics the Treasury Board President was relying on, my question is a little more basic. Let's assume that unreported crimes (the majority of which the reason given for not reporting was that it was not important enough) are a cause for alarm. Why are we building prisons?

Generally unreported crimes are also un-investigated, un-prosecuted, un-tried, un-convicted and un-sentenced. So maybe we should spend un-billions to build un-prisons for these un-convicts instead.