The shocking truth - Şok eden gerçek:
Friday, 25 January 2008
It is an all too familiar alışılmış paradox. The crime suç figures show the risk of falling victim victim kurban to a offence saldırı is going down, but the public halk fear of crime remains as high as ever. Statistics released açıklamak yesterday show that recorded crime in England and Wales fell by 9 per cent yüzde from July to September last year,compared karşılaştırmak to the same period in 2006. But nearly two-thirds of people believe crime is increasing. It is not credible inanılır to argue that the police figures do not reflect the reality of the situation. The authoritative British Crime Survey of offending levels shows the same trend. All crime is down 32 per cent over the past decade on yıl.
In part the gap between statistics and public perceptions algı is due to the nature of the crimes being commit işlemek.Burglaries ev soygunu and vehicle thefts may have declined sharply, but knife and gun crime have risen. The latest police figures show a 4 per cent rise in gun crime. Meanwhile knife crime has increased by 28 per cent over a decade. These are the sorts of crimes which provide serious questions about the nature of our society, especially when children are involved. Such crime is largely confined hapsetmek to particular areas, but it is hardly unreasonable for the public to be concerned about it. Nor is it unreasonable for the public to be concerned about anti-social behaviour such as vandalism and public binge alem drinking which do not show up in the crime statistics, but make life increasingly unpleasant for many people.
But what is unreasonable - and indeed dangerous - is the public's ignorance of the true scale of the problem of crime in Britain. This is partly the fault of the media. The populist press distorts popular impressions izlenim of the level of crime to serve its own reactionary political agenda gündem. But most of the blame suç lies with the Government. For more than a decade it has stoked ateşi körüklemek the public fear of crime with interminable bitmez tükenmez criminal justice bills promising to "get tough sert" on criminals. But it eschews kaçınmak sensible ideas such as liberalising drug laws and reforming prison education, which would have a radical effect on the re-offending rate. Instead, it reaches for headline-grabbing gimmicks hile, such as marching uygun adım yürümek vandals Barbar to cash machines. The result of this noisy and ineffective policy-making is that when ministers bakan turn around and point to a falling crime rate they have no credibility.
This has been illustrated perfectly by the recent behaviour of the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith. Ms Smith gave a foolish interview last weekend in which she spoke of feeling unsafe walking the streets of London at night. But yesterday she was calling the latest crime figures "excellent news" and demanding that the Government be given credit for the reduction. It is no wonder the public remains confused about the true picture of crime in modern Britain when Government ministers themselves seem unable to make their minds up karar vermek.
independent.co.uk