Επιθεώρηση Κοινωνικών Ερευνών, 129 Β' 2009, 157-169  Joanna Tsiganou, Chrysoula Dendrìnou, Catherìne Iliou, Eleni Roinioti* MEASURING CRIME: METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS ON RECORDING AND INTERPRETING CRIME STATISTICS IN LOCAL - NATIONAL, EUROPEAN AND INTERNATIONAL LEVELS POSTSCRIPTUM The basic questions of our undertaking deal with the nature and extend of crime, that is, with the state of our knowledge about «crìme levels», «crìme patterns» and «crìme trends». Considering the issue of recording and interpreting crime statistics, one should bear in mind that, and, I quote, «at heart the extent of crime is a political as well as a behavioral matter... The figures for crime... are not 'hard facts' in the sense that this is true of the height and weight ofphysical bodies. They are moral not physical statistics». 1 The above issues were confronted in the attempt of constructing at the Greek National Centre for Social Research a comparative crime statistics data set, within the realization of a broader project titled as «Node Development for Secondary Data Analysis and Administration». It was soon realized that the whole exercise was not a matter of painting 2 in different colors the picture of crime as recorded by official and research * Paper presented at the 7th annual conference of the European Society of Criminology, Bologna, 26-29 September 2007. 1. Young J., 1988, «Radical criminology in Britain: The emergence of a competing paradigm», British Journal of Criminology, vol. 28/2, o. 289-313, cit. pg. 175. 2. To use the expression of Maguire M., 1994, ibid. pp. 236.