Britain isn’t getting safer - we’ve just stopped reporting most crimes
It seems like every week we are exposed to new crime statistics, and headlines celebrating a perceived decline in crime.
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The most recent data, released by the Office for National Statistics, concludes a fall in most reported crime overall, but a sustained increase in the number of reported sexual offences.
Whilst I do not doubt that this is an accurate reflection of the official figures, I cannot imagine that the average person would agree that our streets are any safer than they were 10 years ago.
The way society experiences crime is changing. The police will seldom take a complaint of phone theft or shoplifting seriously, dissuading many victims of these crimes from ever making a report.
Meanwhile, a victim of rape or sexual assault is now progressively more likely to make a complaint, and the police strongly incentivised to investigate it.
The result is widespread and sustained under-reporting of so-called ‘petty crimes’ that degrade public trust and safety, whilst allegations of serious sexual offences are pursued consistently and aggressively.
In my view, the public want and need a police force that can be relied upon to investigate every substantive complaint that is reported to them - rather than ‘reassurances’ that their streets are actually safer, simply because the official figures say so.
This phenomenon has a relatively easy explanation. The police are less resourced and more stretched than they have ever been, with an exodus of trained and experienced officers who are adept at skilled community policing.
Meanwhile, they must deal with a catalogue of criminal offences that keeps growing, and an overburdened criminal justice system without the court days or prison spaces to deal with offenders.
In this scenario, it is perhaps right that the most serious crimes are prioritised, but this does nothing for those in the towns and cities where crime has become a depressingly mundane part of everyday life.
As a criminal defence solicitor specialising in sexual offences, I can attest to the sustained rise in alleged sexual offences being investigated and prosecuted.
Year-on-year, my firm receives progressively more inquiries relating to all types of alleged sexual offending, with a marked increase in rape allegations and allegations of sex crimes committed online.
Part of this is a change in social attitudes that promotes reporting, but also broader factors related to immigration, the introduction of new sexual offences in law, and an explosion in the number of internet sex crimes like indecent images offences and online child sexual abuse.
In my view, it is very likely that crime of most categories is higher than it ever has been, with the number of sex offences in particular dwarfing what the authorities know about.
The main difference today is that a person is far less likely to contact the police if their mobile phone is stolen - but considerably more likely to make a complaint if they have been raped.
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Marcus Johnstone is a criminal defence solicitor of 25 years, and the managing director of PCD Solicitors, a nationwide criminal defence firm specialising in sexual offences.
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