Crime figures

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Fear and loathing

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• Editorial
• The Guardian,
• Friday July 18, 2008
• Article history

It is not always foolish to be afraid, but nor is all fear rational.

As much as governments might wish otherwise, people will always judge risks in society on what they hear and what they feel, as well as what happens to them. That is why,

although overall crime dropped 10% last year, and has been falling since 1995, it matters that yesterday's British Crime Survey showed that 65% of people believe that it has gone up.

Anxiety can be an imprisoning thing, sometimes as pernicious as crime itself. It can also lead to bad policy - a race to severe punishment that neither reassures the public, nor reduces the risk, but instead only fuels a (false) sense that society is under siege.

Politicians, afraid of looking weak, or dismissive of real dangers such as the recent spate of knife crime (and the reporting of it) have not done as much as they should to explain the reality of crime in Britain. It is also true that this is not a wholly peaceful society. There were two murders a day in England and Wales in 2007-08, an increase; 15,094 recorded incidences of serious wounding; 595 recorded incidences of child abduction and - according to the British Crime Survey - almost a quarter of people can expect to be the victim of some sort of crime each year. Nonetheless,

the trend is clear, impressive and little recognised. The country is getting safer.

Crime has fallen by 48% since 1995 and the most common crimes also tend to be the least significant. Vandalism accounts for 27% of BCS crime. The data can be disputed, and is in conflict: the BCS, based on 47,000 interviews, does not mirror recorded crime figures, also issued yesterday, which are a reflection of what the police are told, rather than what happens. But on any measure, people should be getting more confident about their security, rather than less so. The central puzzle of yesterday's crime statistics is why, as crime falls, fear of it seems to grow.

One answer might be that crime is not falling at all: that some incidences of it, such as drug use or knife crime, have simply become so common in some parts of the country that it is never counted. Some researchers suggest that data from accident and emergency wards, which is not properly collected, shows knife crime rising; yesterday's figures also show gun and drug crime have gone up. Children are not interviewed by the BCS. Even when the overall trend is down, there will be visible episodes that run the other way.

It is true, too, that dangers are not shared equally: knife crime is concentrated in five big cities, led by London and inside each the main victims are young men in particular areas. For them, fear is rational.

Politicians will be tempted to blame anxiety on the media ("Knives: why no part of Britain is safe", exclaimed yesterday's Daily Mail). But they exploit it too. Both Labour and Tory politicians are guilty of offering instant fixes to problems that are complex and sometimes do not exist at all. People in all parties have become better, however, at recognising that one of the reasons people are afraid of crime is that they think it is not taken seriously and that criminals are mostly not caught. Crime has not fallen, primarily, because the police have prevented it, but because society has got richer and older - which is why it has gone down almost everywhere else in Europe, too. Young men remain violent, but there are fewer of them.

Yesterday's policing green paper is a response: it recognises that people will feel safer if they think that their fears are known. The proposal to allow elected mayors control over policing (and the Tory plan for elected chiefs that came before it) has its difficulties.

Logic may be lost to popularity. But as things stand, the police appear to be a distant and inadequate force: only 53% think they do a good or excellent job. People do not think they are being protected from risks they believe to exist. Until that changes, fear of crime will remain high - however reassuring the reality.