Record rise in crime figures
01 January 1991
Record rise in crime figures
artdoc June=1991
Crime figures released by the Home Office for the year to the
end of June 1990 show one of the highest ever increases.
Recorded crime rose by 17%, with the largest increases in
property offences including thefts of and from cars, and
burglaries. These was a less dramatic rise in violent crimes
such as assaults, sexual offences, and robberies, and the
number of thefts from the person, which included `mugging',
actually fell by 4%. The rise in crime was particularly
significant in rural areas, such as Leceistershire,
Warwickshire, Dorset and Nottinghamshire.
Reactions to the crime figures varied. The Daily Mail
reported them under a headline `A Nation of Thieves', and in
an earlier piece talked of the cost of insurance in wealthy
suburbs and inner city areas being set to `soar'. Home Office
minister John Patten spoke of an `epidemic' of minor property
crime, but both he and the Prime Minister refused to consider
extra resources for the police. But the president of the
Police Superintendents Association spoke of the police being
hamstrung by `antiquated equipment and redundant technology'
and complained of a 90 million cut in police capital spending
this year.
Both the Independent and the Times used the occasion of
the crime figures to report on Home Office research linking
crime patterns to the general state of the economy. The
research shows that there is a correlation between periods of
economic recession and rises in property crime. On the other
hand, personal crime tended not to rise so fast during
recession because people spent more time in their homes.
Richard Wells, the new chief constable of South Yorkshire,
in a letter to the Independent, said the police service is
`overwhelmed', the symptoms appearing variously as reduced
response to routine' calls, less time spent by officers at each
call they do attend, and a growing volume of distress signals
from professional officers who feel increasingly isolated in
the failure to meet their own high standards. He says the
police are at a `crossroads' between two styles of policing.
The first would follow recent Home Office initiatives to create
a `joint effort' among individuals, services and businesses,
`counselled and aided by a responsive police service', to
tackle the `vast bulk of preventable, opportunist crime.' This
would release police resources to hold the `messy end of
society's stick - terrorism, organised crime, violence,
disorder...'
The alternative route, according to Wells, would be to
ignore `broad-based strategies for crime reduction', which
would result in `almost certainly continued rises in reported
crime [and] increase fear tinged with moral panic. Such panic
could frighten a government of any hue to lurch towards its
extremes - left or right - with the police swept inevitably and
irrevocably to suppression by force... With that would come the
end of modern British policing and, arguably, society as we now
recognise it.' (Daily Mail 18.9.90 and 27.9.90; Times 27.9.90;
Independent 27.9.90 and 29.9.90)
IRR Police-Media Bulletin No 64. Institute of Race Relations,
2-6 Leeke Street, London WC1X 9HS