  Policy targets are being set increasingly for social and economic variables
in the UK. This approach requires that reasonably successful ex ante forecasts
can be made. We propose a general methodology for assessing the extent to which
this can be done. It has already been applied to GDP growth rate data. In this
paper, we illustrate the technique with reference to property and violent crime
in the UK over the post-war period. The forecasting record of the Home Office
is poor. We show that this arises from an inherent property of the data, namely
a lack of genuine information content. It is not possible in the current state
of scientific knowledge to improve significantly on the Home Office record. We
relate these findings to the econometric methodology of co-integration, and
show that the correlation matrix of the data used in the Home Office models is
dominated by noise.
