The one set of statistics that seems to give people more problems than any other are crime statistics.They can be read in so many different ways, and in a small community, small changes can be made huge on a proportional basis.Thus, if the number of murders increases from one to two in a quarter, that’s a 100 percent increase, but if the number of assaults increases from 50 to 51 in the same period, that’s a two percent increase, even though the actual number is the same.Similarly, particular crimes in a small community can rise or fall dramatically, depending on whether as few as one or two people are active or are behind bars. Burglaries are a classic example of this.Care also needs to be taken with comparisons. Comparing one quarter with the preceding three months can give you a sense of whether overall crime is moving up or down, but fails to take seasonal variations into account.Total crime increased between April and June compared to the first three months of the year, and was up slightly over the same period in 2010.However, the overall trend over the past three to five years has been downward.The question for the Police is whether the increase in the second quarter is the start of a reversal of the trend or is just an anomaly.The guessing here is that it is an anomaly, and it has been caused by big increases in one or two areas while the general trend, especially for violent crime, is improving.The most encouraging change is in violent crime, which has decreased substantially from the horrors of 2010. Care needs to be taken with this because it does not take much for these incidents to soar again.But high arrest rates and “proactive policing” seem to be having a real effect on gang violence.However, these are containment measures, and if the causes of gang violence are not addressed, then there is every reason to believe that there could be another surge. The fact many gang leaders are behind bars or dead also leaves a power vacuum which could lead to further violent outbursts.Two areas of crime surged in the second quarter of 2011. One was burglaries, which shot up to 215 in the second quarter compared to 100 in the same period in 2010 and 152 in the first three months of this year.As noted already, burglaries can be very erratic because a small number of frequent offenders can cause mini-crime waves in this area. But if the scale of these offences continues in the third quarter, then the Police need to be look at this carefully, and with a will to do something about it.The second area that jumped was antisocial behaviour, which covers a gamut of minor offences. It rose to 156 in the quarter, the third highest figure in the last five years.Care needs to be taken that the more assertive approach being taken by the Police does not lead to these offences rising in response.To some degree, the surprise is that crime has not increased more rapidly as the economy has worsened and as the Police budget cuts began to bite at the beginning of April.But all of this may still take some time to filter through.The importance of the public assisting the Police and prosecutors cannot be overstated. The risks for Bermuda remain enormous, and the well-being of the whole Island depends on it becoming a safer place.This is not simply a question of personal safety, although that it is the overriding concern. It’s also a question of Bermuda’s reputation as a safe place to visit and to do business. If the Island’s economy continues to contract as a result, then that will be fertile ground for criminals facing an increasingly straitened Police Service.