Serious violent crime is going up NOT down - Home Office
Serious violent crime is going up NOT down, Home Office chief admits The head of the Home Office has admitted in a leaked document that the Government has failed to reduce serious violent crime over the past decade. In a paper marked ‘Restricted Policy’, Sir David Normington, the Department’s top civil servant, admits that under Labour the levels of the most violent crimes such as murder, serious assaults and rape are higher than they were in 1997. The admission by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s most senior Civil Service adviser appears to be at odds with claims by Ministers that levels of violent crime have fallen since Labour came to power. The Home Office admitted last night that its own figures showed there were 14,000 serious violent offences in 1997-98 and 16,000 in 2007-08. Sir David’s 101-page document, sent to new Home Office Ministers appointed in Gordon Brown’s reshuffle last month, says that because police forces were given incentives to concentrate on less serious offences in order to improve crime figures, they were less able to tackle the more violent incidents. Sir David discloses that because the most serious violent crimes have not been reduced, the Government’s long- term strategy will now concentrate on these rather than less serious ones. In July, Jacqui Smith twice used the British Crime Survey, based on surveys of thousands of members of the public, rather than crimes recorded by the police, to claim all types of violent crime had fallen substantially since 1997. In response to the July 2008 crime figures, she said on the Home Office website: ‘Since 1997, crime measured by the British Crime Survey has fallen by 39 per cent with violence down by 40 per cent and burglary down by over half (55 per cent).’ And on July 17 she repeated her claim that violence had dropped by 40 per cent since 1997, ‘with a 12 per cent fall in the last year alone’. snip http://tinyurl.com/6dcyqh
Liar!
Serious violent crime is going up NOT down, Home Office chief admits The head of the Home Office has admitted in a leaked document that the Government has failed to reduce serious violent crime over the past decade. In a paper marked ‘Restricted Policy’, Sir David Normington, the Department’s top civil servant, admits that under Labour the levels of the most violent crimes such as murder, serious assaults and rape are higher than they were in 1997. The admission by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s most senior Civil Service adviser appears to be at odds with claims by Ministers that levels of violent crime have fallen since Labour came to power. The Home Office admitted last night that its own figures showed there were 14,000 serious violent offences in 1997-98 and 16,000 in 2007-08. Sir David’s 101-page document, sent to new Home Office Ministers appointed in Gordon Brown’s reshuffle last month, says that because police forces were given incentives to concentrate on less serious offences in order to improve crime figures, they were less able to tackle the more violent incidents. Sir David discloses that because the most serious violent crimes have not been reduced, the Government’s long- term strategy will now concentrate on these rather than less serious ones. In July, Jacqui Smith twice used the British Crime Survey, based on surveys of thousands of members of the public, rather than crimes recorded by the police, to claim all types of violent crime had fallen substantially since 1997. In response to the July 2008 crime figures, she said on the Home Office website: ‘Since 1997, crime measured by the British Crime Survey has fallen by 39 per cent with violence down by 40 per cent and burglary down by over half (55 per cent).’ And on July 17 she repeated her claim that violence had dropped by 40 per cent since 1997, ‘with a 12 per cent fall in the last year alone’. snip http://tinyurl.com/6dcyqh