Rising crime: should we blame the Tories?

There was a time when the Tories considered themselves the party of law and order, said the Daily Mail. But that claim starts to look “increasingly thin” when you examine the latest crime figures for England and Wales. They show crime spiralling out of control: robbery is up 30%, year on year; knife crime up 16%; burglaries and car break-ins have also risen. And in nine cases out of ten, nobody is even charged; indeed, the detection rate for rape – at just 3% – is a cause for national shame. What message does this send to moped thugs and machete-wielding burglars, other than “keep calm and carry on”? We hear a lot about crime in the big cities, but it isn’t just an urban phenomenon, said Henry Bodkin in The Daily Telegraph. According to the National Rural Crime Survey, 73% of people in rural areas have lost confidence in the police to keep them safe. Given that 69% of farmers and rural business owners say they’ve been the victim of crime within the past 12 months, you can see why.

As if all this weren’t bad enough, we now have “a bleeding-heart” Justice Secretary in the shape of David Gauke, who argues that most of the criminals currently sent to jail should be given community sentences instead, said Simon Heffer in The Sunday Telegraph. Rehabilitation may have its place, but in the present lawless environment “a period of authoritarianism” is essential to shake the criminals’ belief that they can get away with it. If that means “locking up more people for longer to protect the public, then so be it”. But it’s not sentencing policies that are behind the Tories’ failure to keep a lid on crime, said Sean O’grady in The Independent: it’s the cuts they have made to police numbers. Unlike Margaret Thatcher, who was careful to exempt the police from her cuts, the Tories under David Cameron and Theresa May have included them in their austerity policies. The 2011 riots should have served as a warning that police forces need to be strong to cope in periods of social division. “Yet the lesson was ignored.”

It’s not that straightforward, said Jamie Grierson in The Guardian: analysis of individual police districts shows it’s not always those with reduced numbers that have a rise in violence. And in the early years of the coalition’s cuts, violent crime actually fell across the country. The fact is that these statistics embrace many different types of crime, each of which may be increasing for quite different reasons, said The Times. What we need is not more officers, but a smarter use of those we already have. It’s easy for politicians to pick a fight over police numbers. “If they were bolder, they would pick one instead over what those police actually do.”