by John B
The mysteriously popular Coppersblog has a piece up claiming - in line with its general tabloid nonsense agenda - that crime statistics are nonsense, that crime is rocketing, and that we’ll probably all be stabbed by the end of the week.
Reasonably disgustingly, it uses the murder of Arsema Dawit as a “OMG, evil teen stabbings” lede. Err, no: this is a horrible murder, but it’s a domestic-violence-obsessive-love horrible murder. Tying it in with ‘let’s all fear the lawless gangs’ concerns is offensive crap; this kind of killing is barely even correlated with overall crime rates in a society…
It then goes on to quote another copper making some points, which are nonsense.
I work in an area of high public order and violent crime, but statistics show that in my force violent crime is down. This is down to the fact that we have been told to arrest for drunk and disorderly (which isn’t part of the counting rules) rather than public order offences which are counted in the violent crime statistics.
So non-violent crimes aren’t being counted as violent crimes. Good.
Even when we are arresting for serious violent offences, I have seen on several occasions my charges for Section 18 assaults be dropped at court for a plea of Section 39.
Crime statistics are based on reports, not convictions, so this doesn’t affect violent crime rates in the slightest. It’s possible that the CPS are lowering the charge scale because they’re evil lovers of criminals and criminality; it’s also possible they’re lowering the charge scale because the police haven’t provided enough evidence to support the more serious charge and they don’t want the defendant to get away…
The original Copper goes on to discuss a piece about the furore last year over crime committed by prisoners on the early release scheme. The government released statistics covering serious crimes committed by high-risk prisoners (i.e. those who were in for serious crimes in the first place); they also released statistics for serious crimes committed by all prisoners.
Apparently, because the government focused attention in their PR on the first category (which is fair enough - if someone who’s in jail for not paying their TV license is released early and goes on to murder someone, I’m not sure it’s fair to class their victim as a casualty of the early release scheme), while also providing the numbers in the second, that means that all crime stats are lies and wrong, and that therefore even though crime is falling and nobody should be scared of it, it isn’t and we all should be.
In related news, Dave Hill asks Boris whether he’ll accept the data showing that crime on London’s public transport fell last year. Let’s hope he’s not quite as daft and paranoid as the coppers at the front end of things appear to be…
“It’s possible that the CPS are lowering the charge scale because they’re evil lovers of criminals and criminality”
It’s also possible that the CPS are a bunch of fat, lazy, pension-waiting bureaucrats who are all too eager to please their masters by putting ticks in boxes for minor crimes rather than taking a risk on more serious charges, for example, by their eagerness to accept pleas of manslaughter rather than murder.
The one crime we can agree is truly serious is murder and as you know full well the murder rate (England & Wales) in 1960 was around 250 p.a. Today it is around 750 p.a. In considering that 200% increase (repeat: 200% increase)it is worth bearing in mind the tremendous advances in medical techniques at A&E centres which must have saved a huge number of lives that would have been lost and counted as murder in previous years.
I can tell you positively that in the 1950s there were not gangs of feral youths around regularly kicking innocent people to death.
No, the *homicide* rate is 750 p.a. The murder rate hasn’t been determined yet, but it’s likely to be under 300. Read 5CC on the difference.
…also, I can tell you positively that in the 2000s there are not gangs of feral youths around regularly kicking innocent people to death. The reason killings like that of Gary Newlove get so much publicity is because they almost never happen.