Crime no longer falling

[Derek]

Remember when the Police were telling anyone who would listen that the cuts imposed on them would cause crime to rise and were dismissed as 'scaremongering' by the Home Secretary?

Well guess who was right? (Spoiler alert- it wasn't the Home Secretary)

The latest crime figures show rises pretty much across the board. Homicides, which can't really be hidden in the figures, has shown an 11% rise in the year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...medium=twitter

Violent crime increased 27 per cent last year to 939,518 recorded offences in England and Wales, official figures show.

There was an overall seven per cent increase in police recorded crime in 2015 compared with the previous year, with 4.4 million offences.

The year saw 573 murders - an increase of 11 per cent - after the previous set of quarterly data revealed an unexplained spike in homicides in London and the south east.

[ianch99]

Originally Posted by Derek

Remember when the Police were telling anyone who would listen that the cuts imposed on them would cause crime to rise and were dismissed as 'scaremongering' by the Home Secretary?

Well guess who was right? (Spoiler alert- it wasn't the Home Secretary)

The latest crime figures show rises pretty much across the board. Homicides, which can't really be hidden in the figures, has shown an 11% rise in the year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...medium=twitter

Not unexpected given the cuts but we did vote for this right? So we can't complain .. or can we?

[denphone]

Originally Posted by Derek

Remember when the Police were telling anyone who would listen that the cuts imposed on them would cause crime to rise and were dismissed as 'scaremongering' by the Home Secretary?

Well guess who was right? (Spoiler alert- it wasn't the Home Secretary)

The latest crime figures show rises pretty much across the board. Homicides, which can't really be hidden in the figures, has shown an 11% rise in the year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...medium=twitter

As usual politicians speak with forked tongue.

[nomadking]

And how exactly would spending even 10 times the money have saved ANY lives? Similar goes for violent crime. In general the Police can never really prevent that much crime.

[Stop It]

The Conservatives: Tough on Govt. Spending. Tough on the Causes of Govt. Spending.

Serious Note: This was perhaps inevitable. There is always a point where cuts to police cause a dramatic change in perceptions of policing. When criminals think that policing is inadequate to catch them, they'll get more adventurous.

In before someone blames immigration for this.

Originally Posted by nomadking

And how exactly would spending even 10 times the money have saved ANY lives? Similar goes for violent crime. In general the Police can never really prevent that much crime.

Can you ever post without using ridiculous straw-man arguments?

There is a tipping point in any industry, be it private or in this case public enterprise where cutting budgets has a disproportionate affect on results. Just like diminishing returns, there is a point where Pareto principle reverses. When you start cutting into the 20% that covers 80% of customers (This case, front line policing), it magnifies the effects of the cuts. It's the same reason why companies get into trouble once they run out of "efficiency" job cuts and it applies here. Policing cuts are now getting to the point where it IS affecting results. Nobody is arguing for policing budgets to be multiplied by 10, but it is a very reasonable argument to say that the policy of cuts by Govt is now showing to be damaging.

[Derek]

Originally Posted by nomadking

And how exactly would spending even 10 times the money have saved ANY lives? Similar goes for violent crime. In general the Police can never really prevent that much crime.

So we should abolish the Police entirely then?

Perhaps the drop in available Police to conduct stop and search operations and patrol hot spots for gang activity might have an effect on the number of people who think carrying and using weapons is an acceptable chance to take seeing they are unlikely to be challenged over it.

[tweetiepooh]

Without minimising the problems there are always different methods to interpret statistics.

If your crime rate was 1 and then you have 2 that's a 100% increase but a reduction for 2 to 1 is only a drop of 50%. That does exaggerate though.

Also the raw data doesn't cover changes in situations. Now this change may mean we now need to increase budget or how resource is utilised. The raw figures also may not show changes in how data is collected or interpreted. So last year "violent crime" may exclude incidents that are now included. This can work both ways.

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by Derek

So we should abolish the Police entirely then?

Perhaps the drop in available Police to conduct stop and search operations and patrol hot spots for gang activity might have an effect on the number of people who think carrying and using weapons is an acceptable chance to take seeing they are unlikely to be challenged over it.

Again, even 10 times the number of Police would make no difference. That are simply NOT ALLOWED to stop them in the first place.

The Metropolitan Police accounted for 17 per cent of the knife crime rise. Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has clashed with Theresa May, the Home Secretary, over restrictions on stop-and-search powers, which he has said makes it more difficult for officers to identify and arrest people who carry blades.

If the number of Police made that much of a difference in preventing crime then there would be copious examples of where it has specifically made a difference with individual cases, or indeed would have.

Originally Posted by nomadking

Again, even 10 times the number of Police would make no difference. That are simply NOT ALLOWED to stop them in the first place.


If the number of Police made that much of a difference in preventing crime then there would be copious examples of where it has specifically made a difference with individual cases, or indeed would have.

What? Are you being deliberately obtuse?

There are copious examples. Simply look back to when there were more police officers, and witness the lower crime level.

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by Chris

What? Are you being deliberately obtuse?

There are copious examples. Simply look back to when there were more police officers, and witness the lower crime level.

A parallel measure of crime, the Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW) which is based on interviews with the public about their experiences whether they were reported to police or not, said overall crime fell seven per cent to 6.4 million offences.

A recent review of the literature commissioned by HMIC concluded that there was
not enough evidence to say that higher numbers of police officers was the direct
cause of lower levels of crime (Bradford 2011). Despite consistency in some more
recent research, almost all the studies reviewed by Bradford were said to suffer
from limitations which made their findings inconclusive. Nevertheless, while no
single study was found to provide robust evidence of a cause-and-effect
relationship, the review highlighted that the studies, when taken together, pointed
to the potential for police numbers to be negatively associated with at least some
forms of recorded crime, so when police numbers were higher, crime would be
lower. This potential association was found particularly in relation to property and
other acquisitive crime. It was estimated that a 10 percent increase in officers was
likely to be associated with a reduction in property crime of around 3 percent (Levitt
1997). In comparison, the evidence of an association between police numbers and
violent crime was found to be weaker and sometimes contradictory.

Yet it is violent crime that has gone up, and non-violent crime gone down. Other factors in play.

The chances of a police officer being in the right place at the right time is extremely small compared to the number of wrong places or wrong times.

From the actual report...

http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati...ngdecember2015

Accuracy
Following an assessment of crime statistics by the UK Statistics Authority, published in January 2014, the statistics based on police recorded crime data have been found not to meet the required standard for designation as National Statistics. Data from the CSEW continue to be designated as National Statistics.

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) undertook an inspection of the integrity of police recorded crime between December 2013 and August 2014 and concluded that, across England and Wales as a whole, an estimated 1 in 5 offences (19%) that should have been recorded as crimes were not. The renewed focus on the quality of crime recording following this audit means that caution is needed when interpreting trends in police recorded crime. Apparent increases in police recorded crime data may reflect a number of factors, including tightening of recording practice, increases in reporting by victims and also genuine increases in the levels of crime.

Further information is also available in the ‘Accuracy of the statistics’ section.

[ianch99]

This is not all about statistics. When we had more Police patrolling on foot, this brought benefits beyond just pure crime prevention.

The removal of rural policing is also a worrying trend ..

Some interesting points in this article - foot patrols only seem to reduce crime if they are targeted in high-crime areas.

http://whatworks.college.police.uk/R...ble_patrol.pdf

Reviews of the best evidence of ‘what works’ in policing to reduce crime have
highlighted that visible police patrol can reduce crime, but only if it is specifically
targeted to crime hotspots (high crime locations) (Sherman and Eck 2002;
Weisburd and Eck 2004). One trial1
, carried out in the Minneapolis Police
Department, tested the impact of directed police patrols in crime hotspots at ‘hot
times’ (Sherman and Weisburd 1995). Over a ten-month period, 55 experimental
hotspots received twice as much police patrol as a similar number of control
hotspots. The study found that crime and disorder reduced significantly in the
experimental hotspots compared with the control areas.

Random or reactive patrols – that is, officers patrolling an area without
concentrating on crime or anti-social behaviour hotspots, or simply being en route
between attending calls from the public – have been shown to have no crime
reduction effect (Sherman and Eck 2002; Weisburd and Eck 2004).
An evaluation carried out in Kansas City compared one area in which random
general patrol was increased overall to other areas where patrols continued as usual
or only in relation to calls for service. It found random patrol had no effect on crime,
disorder or fear of crime (Kelling et al. 1974). The evidence specifically on random
foot patrol has similarly shown that it has no effect on crime rates (Police
Foundation 1981).

According to my local rag Northumbrian crime figures state that violent crime has increased by 43% and sexual offences by 42% ,which would suggest that a serious and unprecedented breakdown in law and order has happened or a different method of recording crime has been used .

Sure enough

However, top cops in the force have defended the increase, saying it can be attributed to improvements in the way crime is recorded, and increased confidence in victims

.

makes me wonder why crimes weren't recorded accurately before .


http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/...oared-11222069

[Osem]

Originally Posted by martyh

According to my local rag Northumbrian crime figures state that violent crime has increased by 43% and sexual offences by 42% ,which would suggest that a serious and unprecedented breakdown in law and order has happened or a different method of recording crime has been used .

Sure enough
.

makes me wonder why crimes weren't recorded accurately before .


http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/...oared-11222069

Same reason migration numbers aren't maybe?...