New statistics and policy pledges

British Crime Survey details released

New British Crime Survey and police-recorded figures show a 7% fall in crimes in 2009 compared to 2008, despite the recession.

The dramatic drop in overall crime was accompanied by further falls in the levels of gun and knife crime, including a 21% fall in fatal stabbings.

The latest British Crime Survey (BCS) results show a 1% rise in violent crime but Home Office statisticians say this was not statistically significant and the overall levels of violent crime remained stable.

The figures show that the risk of being a victim of crime remains historically low at 22%. The number of people who said the police were doing a good or excellent job rose from 53% to 56%.

The figures also show that the number of people who believe they are suffering from a "high level" of anti-social behaviour has fallen from 17% to 15%, the lowest figure since the measure was introduced almost a decade ago.

In effect, that meant that fewer people were complaining about abandoned cars, rowdiness or drunken behaviour in public places, drug dealing, gangs of teenagers, litter and vandalism. There was a slight rise in the number of people complaining about noisy neighbours.

All main categories of crime were down except sexual offences, which were up by 2%, according to the police figures.

The British Crime Survey found that muggings were down 21% over the year and burglary and vandalism also fell.

The numbers show that violent crime technically rose by 1%, but officials who calculate the figures say that it was not statistically significant.

The government uses two main measures of crime in England and Wales - actual offences recorded by the police and the BCS, which is a rolling survey of 45,000 people's experiences of crime, whether or not they reported the incident.

According to the BCS figures for the calendar year to the end of 2009, burglary fell 12%, vandalism 12% and vehicle-related theft 11%.

Recorded crime by the police shows recorded violence fell by 3% and drugs offences were down 4%.

Police forces also recorded an 11% drop in criminal damage and a 5% fall in muggings and robberies.

Domestic burglary went down 3% and there was a 16% drop in offences against vehicles, which includes attempting to break into a car.

Provisional figures included in the report show a 3% fall in gun-related crime recorded by the police in the year to December 2009. Firearms offences accounted for less than 1% of all crime.

Overall, police recorded 4.4 million crimes, down from almost 4.8m a year before.

Violent crime falling says new study

Further new figures released have thrown an incendiary into the election debate on violent crime.

Analysis of hospital data for England and Wales, by academics at Cardiff University, shows there were 64,000 fewer violence-related attendances in emergency departments last year than in 2001 - a fall of just over 15%.

This contrasts with Conservative claims that violent crime has increased by 44% since 2002. It also appears to contradict Liberal Democrat analysis that hospital admissions for assault are rising.

The figures from the Cardiff study neatly track the downward trend in violence identified by the British Crime Survey (BCS), adding new weight to the argument that, for most people, England and Wales are less violent places than they were a decade ago.

Mark Easton has more here.


Election Pledges:

Labour:

Protect "frontline" police from budget cuts in 2011-2013; ensure that if a police forces fails consistently, either its chief constable will be replaced or it will be taken over by a neighbouring force; oppose elected police authorities or commissioners; "no-nonsense" one-to-one support for the 50,000 most "dysfunctional" families; automatic parenting orders on those whose teenage children breach an Asbo; guarantee an initial response to any complaint about anti-social behaviour within 24 hours and give complainers a named case worker who will report back on progress; make restorative justice available wherever victims approve it, bringing home to criminals the consequences of their crimes; add 15,000 prison places by 2014; give local people a vote on what community service offenders should do; ensure that serious offenders are added to the DNA database "no matter where or when they were convicted"; retain for six years the DNA profiles of those arrested but not convicted.

Liberal Democrats:

Increase police numbers by 3,000 over five years; scrap identity card scheme; make police authorities directly elected, with powers to sack and appoint the Chief Constable, set local policing priorities, and set budgets; annual fitness tests for police officers; replace form-filling with new technology; create a National Crime Reduction Agency to spread best practice through the force; review police officers terms and conditions; seek advice from Law Commission and Plain English Campaign to make paperwork more simple; reduce the use of short sentences and encourage use of community sentencing to reduce prison overcrowding; increase use of "restorative justice", forcing criminals to confront their behaviour.

Conservatives:

Replace police authorities with directly-elected police commissioners, with responsibility for strategy and budgets; strengthen stop and search powers to tackle knife crime; give police the power to publicly identify offenders; change the law so that anyone acting "reasonably" to stop a crime or apprehend a criminal is not arrested or prosecuted; increase police and local authorities’ powers to remove licences from, or refuse to grant licences to problem bars; allow the police to use "instant sanctions" to deal with anti-social behaviour, without criminalising young people unnecessarily; reduce paperwork needed for stop and search procedures; increase prison capacity above Labour’s plans, in order to scrap the early release scheme; use private and voluntary sector groups to improve the rehabilitation of offenders, and pay providers by results; allow courts to specify minimum and maximum sentences for certain offenders; scrap ID cards and identity database.

News updates

New figures indicate falls in reoffending rate among young people

The percentage of offences committed by young people with previous convictions has fallen by nearly nine per cent between 2005 and 2008, government figures reveal.

The rate of offences committed by "juvenile reoffences" fell from 125 per 100 offenders in 2005 to 113.9 in 2008. Overall, figures show that between 2000 and 2008, the frequency of juvenile reoffending fell 24.8 per cent.

Frances Done, chair of the Youth Justice Board, said: "Year on year, the reoffending figures continue to fall.

"This is a tribute to the dedicated work undertaken by staff working in youth offending teams, custodial centres and all youth justice partners."

She said work to reach the government target of seeing a 10 per cent reduction in reoffending by young people from 2005 to 2011, is on track.

Schools minister Vernon Coaker said: "We know that the vast majority of young people are law abiding citizens. But those that do commit a crime must face the consequences.
"We now need to build on this success and to continue our efforts to intervene early and tackle the root causes of youth crime."

BBC launch Jail Tales

Ashley Walters, a contributor to the Stand Up Tall Project, is launching Jail Tales with the BBC. The Jail Tales project is an ambitious mix of multiplatform content, and consists of a series of viral You Tube videos, short films, animated shorts, exclusive music performances and a gritty photo gallery on Facebook. More information can be found at the BBC wesbite here.




Police told to take serious ASBO action




Gordon Brown election pledge

In an attempt to empower victims of antisocial behaviour, the prime minister says they will be entitled to take out civil injunctions, funded by the local public authority, if the police are not taking action within a set time.

"People have got to know if they have a real complaint they will get a fast response, and ultimately if they feel they have not been given satisfaction, they will be able to take a civil injunction themselves and that will be paid for by the authority." Labour is also planning to install champions for victims of antisocial behaviour in every local authority.

News updates: A focus on the fear

PM attacks the politics of fear and announces crime measures

Gordon Brown has set out new measures to tackle anti-social behaviour, as he put the fight against the fear of crime and yobbery at the heart of the general election battle.

The Prime Minister accused the Conservatives of ramping up the fear of crime by "abusing" statistics and spreading the "fiction" that Britain is a broken society.

And he warned that David Cameron's party would "politicise" the police by introducing elections for top officers.

Mr Brown repeated pledges that Labour will protect frontline policing against cuts as the Government seeks to halve the state deficit in four years. He also said he wanted policing to be more "visible", with neighbourhood officers spending 80% of their time on the beat and patrolling singly rather than in pairs.

Speaking to an audience of police officers in Reading, Mr Brown said that he would legislate in the next session if Labour is re-elected to give victims of serious anti-social behaviour a "guarantee of protection".

Citing the case of Fiona Pilkington, who killed herself and her disabled daughter after failing to receive protection against bullies, Mr Brown said that victims should be supported in getting legal injunctions, with the costs paid by the agencies who had let them down.

He confirmed plans for a new non-emergency number to inform police about anti-social behaviour and said that from now there would be an expectation that anyone breaching an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo) will be prosecuted, and that the parents of those under 16 would also face action.

New Film: The Fear Factory

A new film has been launched, which looks at the problems surrounding the fear of crime and criticises the so-called "arms race" on law and order issues between political parties. Watch the trailer here.

New Economics Foundation: Young criminals 'cost £140,000'

Jailing one young criminal costs the taxpayer as much as £140,000 a year, a report has said.

Locking up young offenders also makes them more likely to commit further crimes and be unemployed later in life, the New Economics Foundation said.

The think-tank called for drastic cuts in the use of youth custody.

Budgets for youth custody should be given to councils and the money reinvested in rehabilitation programmes, the report said.

Last month there were 2,195 children aged 10 to 17-year-olds imprisoned in England and Wales.
Each place costs £100,000 a year and an extra £40,000 in indirect costs to society once the inmate is released.

A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: "Latest figures show there are 20% fewer first time young offenders under 18 years of age than a year ago and the frequency of youth re-offending has fallen by nearly a quarter since 2000."

Chris Huhne: Tough on Crime? Jail is not the answer

Chris Huhne, a contributor to the Stand Up Tall Project, writes that locking up more people is a populist ploy that doesn't cut crime, and that we should focus on rigorous community sentences instead. Read the full article here.

Chris Grayling and David Cameron can't go on like this

The more you really think about what Chris Grayling is trying to achieve by deliberately deceiving the British public about the reality of crime rates in Britain, the worse it gets. Exposed by the BBC, rebuked by the Chairman of the independent UK Statistics Authority for ‘damaging public trust’, debunked by this week’s Economist in a front page special feature, condemned by local police commanders, and denounced by Conservative colleagues, Chris Grayling has vowed to maintain his crumbling stance on this issue until the general election. Last Friday, it was left to the Director of Reform, the right-wing think tank, to set the record straight at ConservativeHome with a decent intervention, after Tory activists and bloggers had wearily attempted to defend the indefensible on the site, earlier on in the day.

The truth is that this problem is not isolated to crime figures. For example, today only half as many girls between 15 and 19 years old bear a child in their teens than when their grandmothers were that age. Smoking is falling among adults and children and is now one of the rich world’s lowest rates. And it has just been revealed that the number of divorces in England and Wales has fallen for a fifth successive year to the lowest rate for 29 years. None of this matches up to the 'Broken Britain' narrative.

There are urgent questions that need to be asked, particularly in light of defamatory press releases, which have been sent out under the radar to every constituency in England and Wales, purporting to show that violent crime had risen sharply; these press releases have the simple aim of terrifying decent British people into voting Conservative.

Firstly, why exactly do senior Tories find it so difficult to accept that violent crime has fallen? The issue is that when your reality is constructed around long-term hysteria, prejudice and episodes of The Wire, having to honourably front up to the fact that crime has fallen 41% since 1997 becomes difficult. Everything you thought you knew about the world, and how it works, is shaken up by it. Violent crime is now almost half of what it was in 1995, and is no higher than in 1981, for example. Police figures indicate a 10-year low for murder rates, and the number of people worried about antisocial behaviour has fallen to 15% — the lowest on record.

Secondly, what are the potential dangers of an ongoing campaign run by Chris Grayling based on suggesting violent crime has shot up? Well, a negative and imbalanced portrayal of disadvantaged British communities and youngsters does nothing but whip up insecurity, resentment and division around individual acts of crime, when they do happen. The result is a culture of fear and alienation, which trickles down to vulnerable youngsters, who seek status and protection through arming themselves. All knife-related violence has just fallen by 12% in the latest figures - however the 85% of that small minority of 10-19 year olds who previously reported carrying a knife cited the need for protection as their reason for carrying a knife. The damage done to real British youngsters and real British communities by Grayling’s campaign could be potentially devastating.

Finally, what can Westminster and the media do in response to all of this? For a start, Grayling and Cameron could front up to the truth, stop pushing these fiddled statistics and apologise to the British public, as well as the hardworking British police forces, who more often than not doing a great job. In the longer-term, Cameron has to shift the focus onto policies, if he sees issues he wants to address.

For the first time in a long time, the British media are beginning to wake up to the issues around the gaps in perception and actual crime figures. We need to keep on getting the message out, nationally and locally, because people are really listening to us about this. And in the end, there is nothing more powerful than the truth.

By Gabe Trodd