Prosecutions sink to low despite high crime

PROSECUTIONS have reached an alltime low despite crime hitting a record high, official Government figures disclosed yesterday.

The number of people dealt with by the criminal justice system in England and Wales fell 7 per cent in the latest year while recorded crimes shot up 11 per cent to 5.5 million.

Baroness Newlove, the Victims’ Commissioner, said that unless the trend was reversed people would “simply give up” reporting crime. MPS said stretched police forces and prosecutors had “raised the bar” for what was worth pursuing as it emerged that spot fines for cannabis possession and petty theft fell by more than a quarter year on year.

Police chiefs blamed cuts in staffing, changes to how crimes are recorded and “significant rises” in complex cases such as child sexual exploitation and online fraud. Prosecutors said the mass of digital evidence that must be processed from phones and computers was partly behind the fall in prosecutions as it cost time and resources.

The Ministry of Justice figures yesterday showed that 1.61 million people were either prosecuted or given an outof-court disposal, for minor crimes, in the year ending March 2018, down 7 per cent year on year and the lowest since records began in 1970.

John Woodcock MP, a member of the Commons home affairs committee, said: “We have seen anecdotal evidence that the bar is being raised higher for what is worth pursuing.”

Lady Newlove said: “Behind these headline statistics, there is a human side, individuals whose lives have been blighted by crime and who will be feeling badly let down, not only by the absence of justice, but the message it sends to criminals, that the chances are you will get away with it. It is important that we reverse this trend.”