International Journal on Criminology Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2013 | Page 61

International Journal on Criminology
–Errors discovered in statistics which have already been published and corrected
according to strict deadlines and those using them are informed of this.
– Information relating to methods and procedures monitored by statistical authorities
are made available to the general public.
– The dates and time of the appearance of statistics are announced in advance
– All users have access to statistics publications at the same time and in the same
conditions and all privileged access previous to the distribution attributed to the external
user is limited, checked and then made public. Should there be a leak of data; methods
and distribution were adapted to ensure equality of data processing.
–Announcements and declarations regarding statistics in the framework of press
conferences are objective and neutral”
Claiming themselves as representatives of public statistics without necessarily being
an SSM within the ministry of the interior, the OND “became independent from the
supervision of the ministry of the interior” and publishes statistics relating to incidents
recorded without “political interference” (Charpin 2006, 19).
The co-existence in official statistics in incidents recorded of institutional
communication of the ministry of the interior and the distribution of “public statistics”
from the ONDRP now has significant consequences on public debate on figures relating
to crime.
It could be a source of confusion when two producers of statistics express themselves
on the same day and sometime in the same place as was the case during the press
conference on annual figures relating to crime which takes place around mid January.
Thus, elements from the speech of the ministry of the interior relating to a single
figure on general crime or the rate of resolving crime cases and these are two elements
missing from ONDRP publications whether quoted in public debate as emanating from
public statistics by the ONDRP.
For more attentive journalists and in particular for those in the press or online (or
even both of them for the newspaper Libération 16 ), concentrated on the mission of
checking figures used in public debate, publications from the ONDRP which allows them
to put communications from the ministry of the interior into perspective or any people
involved in politics which makes use of statistics on incidents recorded to in an incorrect
way in terms of public statistics.
According to the way in which we access public debate, via the intermediary of a
brief article in which the figures on crime recorded are associated with the ONDRP
without referring back to adequate terms or based on a base article for which the
journalist took note of the contents of the publication of the ONDRP and uses it in order
to illustrate what in institutional communication is in contradiction with its methodology
in a similar way to the ONDRP which will be very different.
Transition to the publication of monthly figures on incidents recorded in
institutional communication towards a new organization producing data
Competition between those producing official data was at its most intense in 2005
when a monthly publication in the form of announcements on figures relating to incidents
recorded from the ministry of the interior 17 co-existed alongside OND publications
offering a working framework including figures relating to “monthly figures recorded by
police and gendarme services” from an article published in December 2004. 18
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
16 http://desintox.blogs.liberation.fr/
17 http://www.interieur.gouv.fr/sections/a_votre_service/statistiques/criminalite/2005
18 http://www.inhesj.fr/fichiers/ondrp/resultats_et_methodes/lettreond3.pdf
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