Violent crime is up. Police numbers are down. There must be an inverse correlation between the two, surely. It stands to reason. Cressida Dick, the metropolitan police commissioner, certainly thinks so, as does Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor.
We’re in the midst of a crime epidemic, nominally due to the Government’s - and, in particular, Theresa May’s - short-sighted cuts to the policing budget - a decision that’s unavoidably led to a reduction in police numbers. Indeed, the number of police officers in England and Wales has fallen by over 20,000 since 2010. In the year ending in December 2017, moreover, ostensibly as a result of these cuts, there was a 22 percent increase in knife crime and an 11 percent increase in offences involving firearms. Violent crime’s certainly on the up. Since the beginning of the year, London has even seen more homicides than New York. No mean feat, I’m sure you’ll agree.
But is it really caused by a reduction in police numbers? I have my doubts. According to Home Office data, there are now more police officers per capita than during the 1960s. There are 462 people for every officer in contrast to 807 in 1961. One could be excused for thinking that, based on this measure - and based on the intuitive assumptions of negative correlation espoused by such luminaries as Cressida Dick and Sadiq Khan -, crime must have decreased during this period. After all, both proportionately and in terms of total numbers, there are now more police officers on the streets than there were back in 1961, right? Wrong.
Crime has risen exponentially. In 1961 there were only 806,000 recorded crimes compared to 5.2 million in 2017. When one considers both the statistical and anecdotal evidence - in which people old enough to know recall going out and leaving their front doors unlocked - the general trend of rising crime since the late 1950s is irrefutable. On average, there were 1 million recorded crimes committed annually throughout the 1960s, rising to 2 million in the 1970s and 3.5 million in the Eighties. Even if we allow for the more rigorous recording of crime as a partial explanation for these statistical differences, the general trend is hard to ignore.
For homicides, moreover, a crime for which recording methods have not drastically altered, the growth in cases is clear, despite an increase in the number of police officers. If indeed there is a negative correlation between the number of police officers and the volume of crimes committed in England and Wales, we haven’t seen the evidence to support it yet.
So, if it isn’t the evil Tories and their inhumane, vindictive cuts, what is responsible for the recent spike in crime?
In my view, this question is a distraction - a distraction used by liberal-leftists to score cheap political points and divert attention from the real causes of soaring crime rates over the last 50-60 years. How can we possibly draw meaningful conclusions from a recent development that could be an aberration? Such conclusions invariably lead to misguided responses that do more harm than good, after all.
No, we need to look at longer term trends in an effort to get a fuller, more accurate picture - trends that show, notwithstanding a relative decrease during the late Nineties and Noughties, an increase in crime over the last 50-odd years.
As mentioned above, this is not the result of having fewer police officers - numbers have actually risen. Neither is it the malign consequence of increased poverty levels. Both relative- and absolute-poverty have declined since the 1950s.
It seems to be, all things considered, the unique product of an increase in family breakdown, a concomitant rise in drug misuse and the stubborn refusal of our betters to adequately punish and deter offenders.
Seven out of 10 prison inmates come from broken homes. According to a recent study, moreover, children from such homes are nine times more likely to end up in prison and significantly more likely to abuse illegal drugs. It is therefore no surprise that since the Sixties, as the number of broken homes has inexorably risen, so too has the number of recorded crimes.
In addition, prison - when eventually offenders do get there - has ceased to be an adequate deterrent. Inmates have televisions, games consoles and relatively short sentences. They have unfettered access to illegal drugs, too. In short, they are treated as victims rather than criminals - that’s why our reoffending rates are so high.
These causal factors are the progeny of the irreverent, subversive Sixties - a decade that challenged conservative attitudes, traditional values and the rigid social boundaries that accompanied them. Moral and cultural certainty was replaced by the creed of non-judgementalism, through which different ways of living were deemed equally valid. Christianity became an anachronism, abortion was legalised and divorce, that enemy of societal stability, was made more accessible and acceptable for unhappy couples.
In addition, anarchic, nihilistic rock-stars encouraged drug misuse as an act of rebellion against old, crusty fuddy-duddies and their suffocating conventionality. And our justice system, in the vice-like grip of a revolutionary ideology that still endures today, endeavoured to stop judging criminals by normal standards of behaviour. Henceforth, they would be seen as unwitting victims of their unique socio-cultural and economic circumstances. They are casualties of an unjust society, driven to criminality by desperation and despair. As a consequence, only in the most extreme cases would long prison sentences served in austere conditions be fair.
Some of these developments were undoubtedly liberating. For example, single parents and women who had chosen to have abortions were no longer harangued and insulted for their choices. However, there was an altogether darker side to them. As divorce rates increased, so too did childhood angst, adolescent drug abuse - promoted by influential celebrities, remember? - and criminal activity before, ultimately, incarceration at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Non-judgementalism and soft-sentencing encouraged further criminality, as well. It was a radical social and cultural shift, driven, aided and abetted by leftist hardliners like Jeremy Corbyn.
Not that you would know. With the help of the mainstream media, such individuals have hidden these inconvenient truths and constructed a new, fanciful narrative in which crime was under control until the Tory Government’s reckless cuts to the police budget. To fit this ahistorical claptrap, they focus on a short term relative spike in crime, from which it’s impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions concerning causation. It’s one great big red herring.
In the real world, crime has been on the increase since the 1960s, despite a significant rise in police numbers. Furthermore, it has increased because of the liberal non-judgementalism espoused by people like Corbyn and the right’s craven surrender to their intimidatory wailing. When will a Tory politician stick his or her head above the parapet and say so?
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