QUANTITATIVE DATA TABLE DESCRIPTION

The table above illustrates the police-recorded crimes that occurred from January 2020 to May 2020. The latter covers criminal events that happened before, during and after post-lockdown variations. Officially, the National lockdown took place on 23rd March 2020 and the measures were released on the 13th of May 2020. The figures show that the victim-based-crime category decreased remarkably from +5% in January to -24% in April as reported. Therefore, the most relevant data described are generally regarding the month of April, for instance, robbery offences crimes fell to -49%, and a significant -35% has been recorded for theft offences. These variations are probably linked to the closure of non-essential businesses, and the imposition of restrictions which prohibited leaving the household for non-essential needs. Covid restrictions requirements were imposed by the government and enforced through police patrols with the appliance of fines as penalties to whoever attended to break them. Furthermore, sexual offences show a decrease of -29% in April, however, this quantifies does not include unreported crimes, since victims were living with their perpetrators and forced to stay within the house because of the restrictions, they might not be able to seek assistance. According to the report, the section which comprehends the other crimes against society did not change drastically, but minimal changes are reported from January with a +9% to February –5% and it then it increased from April to May +22%. Agreeing with the data, drug offences decreased from +15% in January to -10% in February, potentially because the police forces were targeting drug-related crimes during the lockdown. Afterwards in April drug offences grow to +16% compared to other crimes which is still below the previous months. Overall, these figures show a significant crime reduction recorded by the police for the four months analysed, but in May all the criminal records are rising, due to the lockdown ends. Quantitative data have the benefit to give a broad picture and to sample a large number of the population. Moreover, this strategy permits the comparison of different cycles and enables dividing into categories by studying people’s trends and behavior. Finally, allow predictions, thus, preventing some problems. However, it is clear that figures on quantitative data approach are dynamic, thus, statistics are not accurate over time. Thus, in this table, the comparison with the previous year is not available, in fact, there is not enough information to interpret the data, and some categories do not mention what crimes they include, such as the miscellaneous crime against society. Police-recorded crime refers only to crime which has been acknowledged by police and probably pursue, neglecting the crimes which have been reported but did not get transcribed or solved, such as petty crimes. Moreover, the quantitative data shown above, do not include the Greater Manchester police records, due to IT system implementation. Finally, police-recorded crimes are recognised as National Statistics because they do not meet the standards.