| Zechariah 9:8 |
"But I will defend my house against marauding forces. Never again will an oppressor overrun my people, for now I am keeping watch." |
| 10/05/09 - Church Security - by the numbers |
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A 19th century British Prime Minister, Mark Twain, and others often coined the phrase "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics". The phrase is often accurate that people will use "numbers" in many ways often to their advantage...we see this in our political system all the time with polls, surveys, and "research". The Christian Security Network, the Christian community, and how numbers relate to crime now seems to be caught up in the "numbers" game. Let me explain. The Christian Security Network began tracking criminal incidents across the U.S. the beginning of this year. We look for all incidents from deaths to arsons to burglaries, and everything in between. We also try to attach a dollar amount to the losses using a variety of sources including the Justice Department and the National Fire Protection Association, among others. To date, and this changes daily, we have tracked almost 800 incidents, 8 deaths, and about $25 million in property losses. When I gave my talks at the ASIS International conference in California a couple of weeks ago I spoke about statistics. For comparison purposes, I use the FBI Hate Crime statistics because these are most often used when talking about attacks against churches and other religious organizations. The object of using these statistics is to show that, although they serve a very useful purpose, they are a bit misleading if you view them alone. In the most recent year reported, the Justice Department showed in 2007 that there were about 136 Hate Crimes against Christian organizations. Compare that number to what the Christian Security Network is showing to date in 2009 at about 800 and you can see that there is quite a gap. But this is easily explained and both statistics are accurate. The problem with just looking at the Hate Crime statistics is that the vast majority of crimes against Christian organizations are never classified as "hate" related; they are just crimes of opportunity. So when a drug addict breaks into the church to steal the musical instruments or laptop computer to pawn off to feed their addiction, it isn't a crime of hate it is a crime of opportunity - we know that over 75% of the churches out there don't have security in place - the criminal knows that too. And property crimes are so tough to track because they are so rampant that we estimate we only account for a tenth of the real figure - but we are being conservative in our estimates. But incidents like deaths and acts of violence in the church are easier to track..or so we thought. As stated above, this year CSN has documented 8 deaths in Christian churches, so why did some media recently report that there have been 23 deaths this year to date and more last year? The problem comes with the source of the information and how one interprets "church related deaths". The Christian Security Network only counts a death if the church staff, volunteers or guests were the target on church property or conducting church business. This is not completely a black and white definition, but I think you get the point. If a church staff member is killed while making the church money deposit, we consider that a "church related death", but if the church staff member was on lunch break and is killed at a local gas station during a robbery we don't count it - it has nothing to do with the church. The source that certain media outlets have recently used, which we were not even aware of until a couple of weeks ago, counts any death that occurs on a religious organization property. So, if a group of teens are hanging around the church parking lot after hours when the church is empty and someone pulls out a gun and shoots four of the youths, this source classifies them as "church deaths". Further, even if a body is found on church property, no matter what the cause, they count it as a "church death" - we would not in either of these examples. Imagine if we used this method for school violence tracking. If every time someone is hurt or killed on a school playground, even when the school was not in session, the crime incident rates for schools would look huge. So you can see why there is some confusion now in the media and among churches - what are the "real" numbers? Plus, it appears that these statistics in the news report also include all religions, even though they state "church"...a mosque is not a church, a synagogue is not a church. They are all Houses of Worship, but when a reporter uses the word "church" and assigns crime data to it, people assume this means the Christian church. Understanding where statistics come from and what they mean is very important. Statistics do help form our opinion, our plans, and sometimes our budgets. But they have to be rational, relevant, and explainable. We have always stated that the Christian Security Network does not compile or report crime data to scare the Christian community; it is just another tool that we give you - copying the Fox News slogan "We report, you decide". But make sure you are deciding using the correct data so you don't over react or under react - both have their consequences. In Christ, Jeff Hawkins Executive Director |
