Government must act to tackle rising crime
Brexit is going to be a long journey, but now that we know the direction the country is moving in, the Government can address neglected business – starting with crime. Since the beginning of the year, we have reported several stories that point to a disturbing pattern: certain kinds of crime are rising and the forces of law and order appear to be giving up.
Take knife crime. In 2009, according to Ministry of Justice figures for England and Wales, there were 26,364 offences involving a knife or an offensive weapon, a figure that slowly declined to just 16,220 in 2014. Since then, the number has risen to 22,286 offences in 2019, the equivalent of 60 a day. Behind the statistics lie horror and tragedy. Last weekend, three men were stabbed and killed in the same incident in east London. One witness compared the scene to Bosnia.
While the number of knife crimes is going up, the number of weapon possession offences resulting in immediate custody has fallen, from 8,050 to 7,728 in 2018-19. Ministers point to a decade-long trend of more being jailed for longer, but the state’s reaction to the knife crime epidemic has inadequately reflected the scale of the problem and the factors that fan it, such as drug gangs operating across county lines. England and Wales have also been sending dangerously mixed signals on illegal drugs. In parts of the country, up to two thirds of cannabis users are let off with an informal “community resolution”, resulting in a postcode lottery for prosecutions. This is unjust.
What has gone wrong? It is a toxic mix of political correctness, bad priorities, an over-focus on community relations and budget cuts. The irony is that the law-and-order establishment has become obsessed with managing public expectations, apparently at the expense of doing the one thing the public expects them to do: enforce the law. The grim consequence is the reduced priority given to fighting certain crimes, as if they did not involve a victim. The chances of a theft resulting in a charge, for instance, have halved since 2015.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that police morale is low, which inevitably affects recruitment. Last year, the Telegraph revealed that one in 10 detective positions have disappeared since 2010, with a fall of up to 40 per cent in some constabularies. This helps explain why detection rates have collapsed. Forces have had to hand over work to less experienced staff so that their remaining detectives can focus on hard cases.
Why are detective numbers shrinking? Because the pay structure and the hours are bad, high-profile mistakes wreck careers, and changes to patterns of crime mean detectives have to divide their time between sifting mountains of data and being a social worker for vulnerable victims. Despite these pressures, officers continue to risk life and limb to keep us safe. Only this week, a court sent down a convicted rapist who had assaulted a PC with a machete. The authority of the police needs to be reasserted, not just for the protection of the public but for the safety of officers, too.
The Government showed that it understands the public’s mood with its manifesto commitment to hire 20,000 new officers – officers who most voters would like to see patrolling the streets (according to one recent study, bobbies on the beat can help cut crime by one fifth). Boris Johnson also got off on the right foot by appointing Priti Patel as Home Secretary, because she is blessedly free of the liberal cant that has typified some of her predecessors. Ms Patel is aware that success will be measured in rising prosecutions and falling crime rates, not the approval of the liberal-left media.
There are many measures needed to tackle this crisis, but ultimately what has been lacking, and what is desperately required, is political leadership. In the same way that Mr Johnson proved that Britain can and will get Brexit done – regardless of the naysayers in the establishment
– so he needs to stick to the spirit of his manifesto and reverse the trend on crime.
There are many measures needed to tackle this crisis, but ultimately what has been lacking is political leadership