In recent months not a day has gone past without media reports of violent crime, especially if it involves knives. These have been accompanied by reports of new powers for teachers to search school children for weapons, perpetrators of crime visiting victims in hospital etc. People are understandably afraid - two thirds of people now believe that the crime rate is going up.
A reality check shows a different picture. Surveys of people's experiences of crime and police statistics on reported crime (two different things) both show the crime is DECREASING. The number of violent crimes is also decreasing, with a particularly sharp decrease in serious violence. Only 6% of violent crimes involved use of a knife or similar (e.g. broken bottle). It is also clear that knife crime is concentrated into a small number of (mostly) inner city areas - in Wales, use of knives is mercifully rare. Altogther 897 serious offences in Wales invovled use of a knife.
Any violent crime is to be deplored but we hardly seem to have 'a broken society', a 'knife culture', or any other other labels the tabloids (and some broadsheets) are bandying around. More people were killed or seriously injured in accidents on Wales's roads (1,373 in 2006) than there were knife crimes. Where are the headlines about that?
We would do well to think about whose interests are served about whipping up a panic about crime, disorder and a 'broken society'.
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1 comments:
I will tell what is increasing I had to phone the police a number of times over the past few years, and at all times they were unable to come out, and once gave me a crime number to give to the insurance company, I only just found out giving out a crime number does not mean the crime has been reported, could this be another good old New Labour tactic of lowering crime by refusing to accept it.
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