The Home Secretary has launched a review of why the public refuses to believe good news that crime is falling.
Charles Clarke wants the group to look at how Home Office crime figures are compiled and published, in an attempt to allay the public’s exaggerated fear of crime and the perception that society is growing ever more lawless.
“I have been concerned for some time that Home Office crime statistics have been questioned and challenged,” said Mr Clarke. “This has got to the point that most people seem confused about what is happening to crime in this country.
“Despite the fact that most crime categories are falling, fear of crime is still too high and public perception is often at odds with reality. That is why we need to look again at the statistics and find out why people do not believe them.
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“This is why I have established an independent cross-party group of experts to look at this issue. I have asked the group to feel free to advise me in whatever way they feel appropriate to help us increase public confidence in our measures of crime.”
Chaired by Professor Adrian Smith, a statistician, the review group will include Dr David Green, the director of the thinktank Civitas, who is the Conservative party nominee, plus a Liberal Democrat nominee to be confirmed.
The panel will also include Dame Helen Reeves, the former chief executive of Victim Support, Dr Irwin Stelzer, a Sunday Times columnist, and Robert Phillis, the chief executive of the Guardian Media Group .
The working group was announced shortly after the police’s latest quarterly crime statistics were published, showing that violent crime has risen, increasing by 4 per cent in the third quarter of last year.
Meanwhile overall crime maintained its steady downward progress, falling by 1 per cent to 1,376,200 incidents in the period.
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But as property crimes such as burglary continue to fall, crimes of violence figure more prominently in the overall total, now representing 23 per cent of all crime. There were 315,800 violent incidents in the three months to September, compared with 304,300 in the same period in 2004.
The picture was mixed. Within the category of crimes of violence, robberies increased 11 per cent to 23,500 incidents. Gun crime rose 1 per cent to 11,110 incidents, but the number of actual deaths by shooting fell by 38 per cent to 50 in the previous 12 months.
Violence against the person rose by 4 per cent, but most of the increase was in lesser crimes. Cases of murder, threats to murder and serious woundings fell by 10 per cent.
Commenting on the figures, the Home Secretary said: “The war against crime we are winning but I can point to battles - and street crime I can point to as an example - where we are not doing as well as we need to.”
Mr Clarke acknowledged that some police forces were “more successful than others” in tackling street crime, but denied that police had taken their eyes off the ball after the Government’s high-profile campaign against robbery and other street offences.
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The Home Office also released figures from the British Crime Survey for the year to the end of September, once seen as the most reliable guide to crime trends, but questioned in recent years when it appeared to contradict the perception that crime was soaring.
Based on interviews with thousands of adults - although excluding teenagers, who represent a growing percentage of crime victims in the UK through street muggings and fights - it suggested that overall crime fell by 2 per cent, and violent crime fell by 5 per cent.
Norman Brennan, the director of the Victims of Crime Trust, a lobby group for tougher action on crime, said that the Government should be recruiting more police officers. “Police have lost control of some towns and cities across the UK and it is not just the public or victims of crime who tell me this, but police officers themselves,” he claimed.
“If the Government has any chance of reclaiming the streets, we need to recruit at least 50,000 new police officers and reduce the huge amount of red tape, political correctness and bureaucracy which has in effect handcuffed the police while the criminal element runs amok. We also need to build at least six further prisons and in essence we need to reclaim the streets from the criminal untouchables.”