Bobbies on the beat for just four hours a week cut crime by a fifth

HAVING bobbies on the beat can cut crime by more than a fifth – even after they leave to patrol elsewhere, a study shows.

A six-month experiment at 57 London Tube stations found that introducing just four 15-minute daily patrols four days a week slashed crime by 21 per cent.

Amazingly, 97 per cent of the decrease was recorded while officers weren’t present.

The study by Cambridge University demonstrated that even short bursts of police visibility could be effective in reducing crime, its authors claimed.

Lawrence Sherman, the university’s professor of experimental criminology, said: ‘In the Underground experiment we see a huge residual effect of brief appearances by patrolling officers after they leave.

‘This phantom effect suggests that crime declines when potential offenders are apprehensive about a possible police presence based on recent patrolling patterns – even when there are no police in the vicinity. This London Underground paradox could have implications for debates on police priorities in an age of austerity – such as the benefits of investigating past crimes compared with the benefits of preventing future crimes.’

In a study of 115 of the Underground’s most crime-ridden stations, 57 were chosen to have patrols in 2011 and 2012. While the experiment was running, 3,549 calls were made to police from stations without patrols, compared with 2,817 in the stations with a regular police presence.

Dr Barak Ariel, fellow in experimental criminology at the University of Cambridge, said: ‘The more that uniformed police have been there, and the more recently, the less likely crimes may occur. For every hour police spend in cars driving to answer non- emergency calls, we can now see that investment in reactive policing is a choice, not a duty.

‘If the question is whether proactive patrols do the most good where the most harm is likely to occur, communities might finally move to reallocate preventive patrols to locations where we have documented their optimal effects.’

David Spencer, of The Centre For Crime Prevention, said: ‘It should come as no surprise that visible police presence deters criminals. It really is a nobrainer. It shouldn’t take Cambridge University research for police to figure this out.’

The Government has promised an extra 20,000 police by 2022 – a reversal of huge cuts to police numbers since 2010. One in three beat bobbies was axed from 2015 to 2018.

A British Transport Police spokesman said: ‘Officers still routinely conduct high-visibility patrols on the London Underground for the purposes of crime reduction.’

‘It should come as no surprise’