Row over figures as crime drops 5%
Matthew Tempest and agencies
Thursday July 22, 2004
The Guardian
Crime has dropped by 5% according to the British Crime Survey - marking the longest period of falling crime for 106 years - although police figures show an increase in reported offences.
The discrepancy has provoked a political row over how the government measures crime figures, after it was revealed that David Blunkett has already met a third of his reduction target for 2007 - only four days after announcing it.
Today's joint publication of both the interview-based British Crime Survey (BCS) figures and the police's reported crime figures, show a stark contradiction - with one claiming falling and the other rising crime rates.
But the BCS figures also show a 5% drop in crime on the previous year - one-third of the way to meeting the home secretary's target, announced on Monday, of a 15% drop within three years.
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats called on the new figures to be taken as the benchmark for a drop, while Mr Blunkett denied advance knowledge of the 5% drop and home office minister Hazel Blears said the BCS was "accepted as the most reliable source of information".
Today's BCS figures show the longest period of falling crime for 106 years, with a 5% drop on 2002-3 figures, and a 39% decrease since 1995. It is measured by 10,000 random interviews on the public's perception and experience of crime.
Meanwhile, the figures recorded by the police showed a 1% rise in overall crime, with a 12% jump in violent crime.
The shadow home secretary, David Davis, said the BCS did not record "various categories of violent crime", including murder and rape, retail crime, drug-taking, or offences in which the victims were aged below 16.
"The most reliable measure of crime is that which is reported to the police," he added. "We're facing over a million violent crimes a year for the first time in history."
He added: "It also seems astonishing that only days ago David Blunkett promised a 15% drop in crime by 2007, only for the figures to apparently deliver a third of his target in the same week. The public at large will simply not believe this supposed fall in crime, and justifiably so."
The Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesman, Mark Oaten, also criticised the target situation.
"To suggest that David Blunkett did not have a fair idea of these figures in advance of his statement on Monday simply beggars belief.
"The honest and decent thing is for him to take the latest set of figures as his starting point. Crime statistics are enough of a political football as it is without this kind of manipulation by the home secretary."
Mr Blunkett welcomed the latest set of figures BCS as "promising". He said: "Crime overall is falling, as measured by the British Crime Survey, after a peak in 1995."
In a statement Mr Blunkett went on: "The facts are very clear. I did not receive the figures published today until two days after the July 12 spending review, in strict accordance with the rules put in place by this government to ensure that ministers do not get significant advance access to unpublished figures.
"However, I am very happy to aspire to go beyond the 15% formal target, as long as we agree it with local partners and work with police forces and local community safety partnerships to achieve change from the bottom up, rather than through an additional top-down target.
"Everyone should be congratulating the police on their success in reducing crime by 5% rather than engaging in these sorts of accusations."
The 15% crime reduction target was regarded as "ambitious" by some criminologists when it was first published on Monday last week. But Ms Blears said the police were doing a "fantastic job".
The recorded figures showed a total of 1,109,017 violent offences in 2003-04, up from 991,603 in the previous year.
It included 955,752 offences of violence against the person, a rise of 14%.
Threats to kill were up 23% to 22,232, serious wounding up 8% to 19,358, racially aggravated wounding up 11% to 4,840 and harassment up 26% to 152,269.
There was little overall change in the number of firearms offences, but there was an 18% jump in the use of imitation weapons to 2,150, and shotguns were used in 720 offences, an increase of 7%.
Sex offences rose 7% to 52,070 - including an 8% rise in rape of women to 12,354 incidents - and criminal damage leaped 9% to 1,205,576.
Overall, the total number of recorded crimes rose 1% to 5,934,580.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4976296-104770,00.html
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