Hopeless policing means mugging has been decriminalised
ASTATISTIC can sometimes be both deeply shocking and yet entirely unsurprising. I doubt a single person will be remotely surprised by the recent revelation of the full extent of the police’s utter uselessness in tackling muggings. But the fact officers failed even to identify a suspect in 30,079 muggings last year is nonetheless still deeply shocking.That’s 80 muggings a day in response to which the police did precisely nothing.
Last year there were 56,284 reported muggings (or, to be precise, “offences of robbery of personal property involving violence or threats”) of which a paltry eight per cent led to charges. That’s the overall figure. In some forces, such asWest Midlands where just four per cent led to a charge, it’s worse.
What this all means is that mugging has effectively been decriminalised. Muggers know there’s next to no chance of being caught, let alone prosecuted – and an even slighter chance of receiving a sentence of any severity. It’s no wonder muggings are so frequent.
IF YOU send out the message that, as a society, we have decided they are a crime we will simply put up with, even thugs challenged in the brain-cell department will realise they are being given the green light. Not, of course, that society has decided any such thing. Ask people what they want from the police and the answer is near unanimous: catch criminals.
That applies to muggings as much as it does to burglaries, theft, assaults and many other such crimes which the police treat with degrees of disdain.
It’s not society that has decriminalised muggings but the police – just as they have many other offences. Figures for 2021-22 show that recorded crime in England and Wales is now at a 20-year high – but with the proportion of offences leading to court action at a corresponding record low. Just 5.6 per cent of all reported offences led to a charge, down from 16 per cent in 2014-2015.
I have my own recent experience of inaction. Last week, as a passenger, I spotted a car veering wildly between two lanes.
Other drivers were forced to swerve to avoid it. It was very dangerous, so we slowed down to take video footage, recording the registration number, to report it.What we then saw was astonishing.
The driver had his phone mounted on the dashboard and was watching a video. I filmed it all. Since then I have reported it to the police verbally, online and via email. Other than an automatic response to the crime reporting website, I have not had a response.
It’s important to recognise cuts to the police have had an impact. Between 2010 and 2017 the overall police workforce was reduced by almost a fifth, with 21,000 fewer police officers and 24,000 fewer civilian staff, such as community support officers. In 2022 HM Inspector of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services found a “national crisis” in investigating officers, with 22 per cent of detective posts vacant.
The Government has gone some way to dealing with this, with 20,000 extra officers. But it’s not really about numbers. It’s about priorities, and a mindset out of kilter with the public.
You can bet, had I posted something on social media that had offended someone, the police would have dropped everything to respond. They have created the notion of so-called “non-crime hate incidents” – in other words, someone saying or doing something entirely lawful. In March, the police added to their files the name of a school pupil who had scuffed a copy of the Quran, apparently after dropping it in a corridor.
And last year ex-policeman Harry Miller won a court ruling after police visited him following a complaint about supposedly “transphobic” tweets.
S‘When did you last see a policeman on the beat?’
UCH has been the obsession with this that the Home Secretary has had to push through a new code of practice ensuring they will only get involved if an incident is “clearly motivated by intentional hostility” and where there is a “real risk of escalation causing significant harm or a criminal offence”.
In addition, police forces have switched most of their resources to offences which take up enormous amounts of time. In 2012, for example, publicity around the first abuse scandal led to a huge rise in reports.
Time and resources for more basic offences have fallen away.
What’s needed is a return to the basics.
When did you last see a policeman on the beat? It should be the norm, not an exception.
Yes, the police need more resources. But to put those resources to proper use means a wholesale change of mindset.