Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Increase in burglaries shows effect of recession

As unemployment rises rapidly, there is likely to be a major rise in some offences, writes Alan Travis

The first indications that the recession is beginning to have an effect on the underlying crime rate in England and Wales are evident in today's Home Office quarterly crime figures.

The rises recorded in the police data for domestic burglaries and fraud and forgery in the year to September are warning signs that the longest sustained fall in the overall crime rate in modern history will soon be coming to an end.

It has long been recognised that the best anti-crime measure of all is a job and, as unemployment starts to rise rapidly, criminologists expect to see increases in the offences that are committed in big volumes, such as burglary and car crime, and make up the bulk of the overall crime rate.

It is highly likely that this latest set of crime figures will be generally reported as an 18% increase in the number of street robberies with knives, fraud and forgery up 16%, drug offences up 9% and domestic burglary up 4%.

But that would give a totally misleading picture of what is happening to crime in England and Wales. It is rather like reporting a football match and only mentioning one team's goals: it makes it difficult to explain why they lost the match.

The headline figures are actually much more reassuring. The authoritative British Crime Survey (BCS) says the overall level of crime in the 12 months to September was stable.

The police recorded figures say the total fell by 3%, with further falls in car crime (down 10%) and criminal damage (down 8%).

The BCS says violent crime has remained stable, while the police say recorded violence against the person fell by 6%. It means the risk of becoming a victim of crime remains at an historically low level of 23%.

But it is what happens to us when we walk down the street that worries us most, and the 18% rise in street robberies involving knives is a truly alarming statistic.

It explains why Downing Street was so keen to get out the reassuring later figures showing that knife crime in the 10 biggest hotspots across the country was being tackled – even at the risk of censure from Whitehall's statistics watchdog.

The rise in knife robberies represents an increase in the number of incidents from 3,551 to 4,207. Alarming enough, but they make up only 22% of the total 19,500 robberies that took place last summer (500 fewer than the summer before).

The fact that the number of murders as a result of a stabbing remains at the record level of 270 should be seen against the background that gun-related murders fell from 59 to 53, some degree of progress.

It is the less dramatic increases in burglaries and fraud that ministers need to be alarmed about as they presage a sustained upturn in the overall crime rate that could prove far more politically damaging.

The row over whether police forces have been undercounting offences in the "most serious violent" category can be discounted. That's not because it doesn't matter. It does, because every time there is a major dispute over the accuracy of the crime figures, public confidence in them takes another knock. It's because it is essentially a debate over whether police forces put offences of grievous bodily harm with intent in which nobody actually got hurt in one violent crime sub-category or another.