The British Crime Survey figures showing a decline in overall crime of 9 per cent in the year to 2010 is a final vindication of the effectiveness of the crime and justice policies of the Labour government. These are the lowest figures since national record keeping began in 1981. You are, therefore, of course, less likely to be a victim of crime now than at any time in the last 30 years. There is, of course, more that should be done (there were still 9.6 million crimes committed this year), however, it is immensely to the credit of our political leaders that through both times of plenty and recession crime continued to reduce such that it is now 43 per cent lower than when Labour came to power.
The Tories are in disarray over the statistical make-up of the crime rate and the cause of declining crime.
David Cameron in PMQs this week repeated the statistical lie that violent and gun crime doubled over the Labour years- just the same lie for which Sir Michael Scholar, the head of the Office for National Statistics, criticised the ill-starred Chris Grayling when he was shadow home secretary- but at the same time Nick Herbert, the policing minister, today accepted that the BCS accurately show long term trends. Violent crime too is down, but not by as much. Herbert’s criticism is that the BCS ignores certain types of crime, particularly, youth crime, however, such figures were not in previous BCS studies either. Herbert’s critique does not compare like with like.
As for the cause of declining crime, there is, if anything, greater confusion. Just the day before the BCS figures came out Ken Clarke, the justice secretary, said that the increase in prison numbers had nothing to do with the reduction in crime, but personally claimed the credit by asserting that reductions in crime were caused by times of prosperity, which he claimed dates back to his period as chancellor (another “Golden Legacy”!). What he noticeably never mentions is the legacy of when he was home secretary when crimes committed in England and Wales reached their highest ever level of 17 million a year – it is now nearly half that. What Clarke knows about tackling crime can be set out on a postage stamp. The BCS figures, of course, puncture Clarke’s claim of a strict causative link between times of prosperity and reductions in crime.
What the coalition now ought to do is look at the Labour record and the beneficial policy mix that was put forward. Build on what works. High levels of investment in policing, with highest ever numbers of officers detecting and dealing with crime, especially through the safer neighbourhood policing schemes (teams of police and PCSOs plugged into the local community dealing with crimes before they took place), targeted social measures aimed at “at risk” families and young people, and, yes, at least to some degree keeping criminals in jail where they could not, for that period, commit crime. Tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.
The coalition plan bunks the successful Labour scheme with a Tory cuts and small state agenda at the fore. Cuts led in the police budget (this week estimated at up to 60,000 jobs of police and ancillary staff to be lost), probation, prisons and courts, while at the same time rehearsing sham claims about a ‘rehabilitation revolution’. Impossible in a background of such gratuitous cuts in all the services that would be needed for such a ‘revolution’.
The coalition is instead distracted with the Lib Dem-inspired sideshow of seeking to improve the lot of rape suspects, introducing expensive structural change in the way police forces are made accountable including introducing a whole new layer of politicians- elected police commissioners, seeking to square the circle of the preservation of “ancient rights and liberties” while arguing for the abolition of the human rights act, a true and proportionate measure by which fundamental rights are protected in this country.
If they continue down the path embarked on the coalition will be throwing out bathwater, baby and bath in terms of tackling crime. They are making the much-repeated political mistake of junking everything that had come before and confusing liberal-sounding rhetoric with taking action to reduce crime and the number of those who go into crime.
The obvious and simple lesson to be taken from the recent crime figures, surely, is that the coalition policy should be to adopt the Labour record and seek to build on it.
Crime statistics should always be treated with care, but there is no doubt that crime has substantially fallen since the early 1990s. The author is wrong, however, to dismiss Clarke’s point about the economy quite so lightly. The author is also wrong to ascribe the fall in crime so literally to investment in the criminal justice system. The last government’s own research stated that a 22% increase in the prison population had at most contributed to a sixth in the fall of crime, and that any further increase in the prison population would do nothing to see crime further. The primary reasons behind the fall in crime were – good economic conditions since the mid 1990s (as Clarke said), improvements in home security and the declining price of secondhand electronic goods. Elements of the criminal justice system – particularly probation – will need investment if they are to take the weight if the prison population does end up being reduced. It is unclear whether the coalition will do this. But there is a more profound point that Labour could make from opposition. This line of criticism from Labour would not be to wax lyrical about a criminal justice system that swelled into one of the biggest by proportion of GDP in the world and is simply no longer affordable. The coalition is right to say that justice is not a numbers game as regards police on the beat, or prison places. The best way to fight crime, and its underlying causes – accommodation, drugs, mental health, employment, education – is to invest in public services. It is these cuts on the horizon, not the criminal justice cuts, that will do the most to endanger the sustained fall in crime.
Labour should have made more on its record on crime at the last election. It’s what people care about.