International Journal on Criminology Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2013 | Page 54

Competition Between Those Involved in Public Debate on Crime Statistics
2006). There are therefore several statuses of official statistics according to which they
are or are not inserted into public debate. Similarly, statistics which are considered
“official” are not necessarily pieces of information which can be described as public
statistics, that is to say which meet the criteria stated in the first article of the law no. 51-
711 from the June 7, 1951 on the obligation, coordination, and secrets in the field of
statistics. 2
It is therefore possible that a public organization which produces statistics which
does not call itself a public statistics body can distribute their information in a general
framework that we will call “institutional communication”, which means communicating
information in a way that aims to promote the image of an organism of a government
agency or at least to underline the efficiency of a particular political act.
In the field of crime statistics, the institutional communication includes all figures
distributed by the ministry of the interior, the head of the national police or national
gendarmerie or at a local level, by a regional police chief, or a national head of the police,
or gendarmerie.
The production of official statistics linked to the activity of police and gendarme
services relating to crime is ensured by the head of the national police including the head
of public security, and the national gendarmerie. Statistics on non-road related crimes and
offences are centralized and consolidated by the head of the criminal police.
This source of data is called the “état 4001” from the name of the form which
existed, before the computerized format of this recording tool. It was used for the
collection and transmission of statistics regarding incidents recorded, cases resolved, and
people accused by police and gendarmes for non-road related crimes and offences
(Padieu et al 2002 143-148).
The division of the head of the criminal police which has managed the état 4001
since its creation at the beginning of the 1970s, currently named “division of studies and
forecasting”, 3 is not and has never been involved in the system of public statistics and is
even less of a “ministerial statistical service”.
This expression relates to services of the government who train with INSEE, the
public statistics service (the SSP) according to the article 1, paragraph 1, of the law from
the June 7, 1951. In particular, it stipulates that “The public statistics service includes the
national institute for statistics and economic studies and ministerial statistical services.”.
It also defines “public statistics” as the grouping of “the overall information from all
statistics produced” from, on the one hand “statistics studies for which the list is ordered
each year from an order from the ministry responsible for the economy” and on the other
hand by the “use, for general information purposes, data collected by administrations,
public or private organizations responsible for a public service mission”. It is also
specified that “the design, production and distribution of public statistics are carried out
in complete professional independence”.
Furthermore, in between the public statistics service (SSP) and public statistics,
“there is no exact coincidence” (Le Gléau 2009, 59). However, this lack of coincidence
above all affects “some services producing public statistics”, such as “The Bank of
France or INED 4 ” are not “part of the SSP, as they do not have the status of ministerial
statistical services (SSM)”.
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2 http://www.autorite-statistiquepublique.fr/pdf/Textes_fondateurs/Loi_51_modifiee_LME_aout_2008.pdf
3 Division of studies and forecasting.
4 National Institute of Demographic Studies.
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