I think it is time to be honest about what has been happening in our country. There has always been violence. There has always been evil.
But there is something about the frequency of these crimes – the depravity of these crimes, that betrays a deep and fundamental problem in Britain today.
As I have argued for many years now, these acts of murder and abuse are just the most violent and horrific expressions of what I have called the broken society. I know I've been criticised for saying our society is broken and I know I will be again. But I am saying this as I see it.
What's actually true (from the Guardian's Reality Check):
The British Crime Survey, which is based on interviews with 40,000 people a year about their experience of crime, shows violent crime is down by 49% since 1995. The Cardiff University hospital data published last week also tracked a downward trend with a 15% fall in the number of people treated for wounds in A&E departments since 2001. This contrasts with the Conservative claim that violent crime has risen by 44% since 2002 based on an extrapolation of House of Commons library analysis of police recorded crime figures.
The fact that the murder rate in England and Wales is now the lowest for a decade at 651 murders in 2008/09 is a clear indication of the direction of the most serious violent crime.
Why?
Nobody ever lost votes by frightening citizens and then promising 'more bobbies on the beat' and blaming an alienated underclass of feral benefit scroungers for the world's ills. What's interesting about the current figures is that crime has fallen substantially - usually it increases during recessions as desperate people commit crimes to survive. How Cameron can pay for more police and criminals is 'unclear' (by which I mean fantasy).
So remember: overall crime is hugely down over the past 13 years. Violent crime is hugely down too - across all ways to measure the statistics.
No comments:
Post a Comment