If alarm bells were not yet ringing over crime, they will be after the latest set of official figures. Theresa May was in many respects a lucky home secretary who presided over falling crime figures alongside a drop in police numbers.
That luck appears to have run out, leaving her successor Amber Rudd and the Conservatives with a growing law and order problem.
While statisticians continue to highlight that the long term trend of offending as measured by the Crime Survey of England and Wales continues to fall, the police recorded figures tell a different story.
Of course, increases are partially a result of improvements in recording practices. Unfortunately for the government and Ms Rudd, the offences that statisticians believe have genuinely risen are the “high harm” but “low volume” types such as knife crime, robbery and firearms offences. The numbers may be small but they are the crimes that most alarm the public .
However, it is now beginning to look as if the tide is turning on bulk crimes such as recorded burglaries and vehicle offences. Statisticians are beginning to say that the increase in both areas are showing up in the Crime Survey of England and Wales and not just in crimes recorded by police.
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If that trend continues it will truly be cause for alarm at the Home Office, because it was the big drop in bulk crimes such as burglary and vehicle theft that helped to drive down overall offending levels from the peaks of the mid-1990s.