Enforcement fallacies

Lies, damned lies and crime statistics. Or so the phrase nearly goes. One particular facet of the crime statistics conundrum is the question of minor offences, which are usually only recorded when some sort of enforcement action is taken. Thus we can only really guess at the number of drivers who illegally use hand-held mobile phones, for example, because the chances of being brought to book for this - and therefore appearing in the statistics - is remote.

Likewise, the recent revelation that only three people have been prosecuted in the last two years for selling alcohol to someone already drunk hardly seems to be representative of the scale of the offence.

Thus it was slightly bemusing to read a recent article in the Courier about the smoking ban, which proclaimed that because no fines had been handed out in several areas recently, this means: "Adherence to the smoking ban is virtually complete".

It's not entirely clear how the authorities go about enforcing the ban, but reading the Courier's article it seems like they think that if anyone wants to flout the ban then it will be obvious, thus a ticket can be issued and that's the end of the matter. Of course, the reality is perhaps that smokers have become adept at flouting the ban and making sure they get away with it, which perhaps explains the decline in the number of fines issued by Fife Council, for example. And perhaps the significant number of fines still being handed out in Dundee merely indicates more robust enforcement rather than any genuinely higher level of actual offences as compared to that in other areas.

A more obviously anomalous scenario relates to littering, where it should be clear to all that the number of fines handed out are negligible compared to the number of offences committed, while it's equally self-evident that the authorities could conceivably issue no fines at all or increase numbers several-fold merely by dint of a change in enforcement policy.

By the same token, another recent Courier article hailed a drop in the number of fixed penalty notices handed out by police for low-level anti-social behaviour as meaning that this type of offence is "on the wane". Tayside Police are claiming that this proves the FPNs are having a deterrent effect, but it's arguable that the reducing numbers merely reflect enforcement issues rather than actual offences committed.

It's certainly the case that the number of FPNs issued is not insignificant - between three and four thousand in each of the last two years - and thus there could be some deterrent effect, but on the other hand at less than ten per day the reality is surely that the vast majority of these offences go unpunished and thus the number of fines doesn't really tell us anything truly significant.