Analysis: Urban crime is on the decline: but can we trust the evidence?

Police forces seem to be fulfilling Tony Blair's promise to cut a robbery epidemic, but criminologists detect some flaws in the findings

It was smiles all round at a former robbery hotspot outside Clapham Junction railway station in London yesterday as David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, posed for photographs with Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

The message was clear: the street crime epidemic that had become the scourge of urban Britain had been brought "under control", just as Tony Blair promised it would.

The scene at the railway station entrance was in marked contrast to the relationship between Mr Blunkett and the Scotland Yard chief only seven months ago, when the Home Secretary publicly warned that he would directly intervene if violent crime in London was not reduced.

Yesterday Mr Blunkett announced that street crime had been reduced by 14 per cent in the 10 predominantly urban forces where the problem has been the target of an unprecedented £67m police initiative.

But no sooner had news emerged of what appeared to be a dramatic transformation than criminologists and other experts began to voice doubts about the picture being presented by the Government.

When Mr Blair made his promise to the House of Commons in April he said that 10 chosen forces would demonstrate that they had street crime "under control" by reducing the number of crimes between then and September to a lower level than recorded in the equivalent six-month period of 2001.

Yesterday chief constables came forward to congratulate their officers on falls in street crime in nine of the 10 areas last month compared with April. Although it remains likely that five of the forces will not meet the year-on-year target as outlined by the Prime Minister, that announcement will not be made until next month.

The police chiefs have been under considerable pressure to produce the figures that ministers want to see.

A government street crime task force appointed a member of the Cabinet to oversee the progress of each of the 10 forces. Chief constables have been badgered by Home Office officials for weekly bulletins on the levels of street crime in their areas.

Professor Jock Young, head of the Centre for Criminology at Middlesex University, said he doubted that police were able to influence levels of street crime to the degree that politicians and the public imagined.

"I don't think it's in their control at all," he said. "The chances of a police officer seeing a street robbery are pretty minute. When the crime rate was going down and there was pressure to reduce police resources there was a temptation for police to exaggerate street crime." Professor Young added that crime figures were wide open to manipulation. "The line between what is theft and what is robbery is a very porous one," he said.

David Wilson, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Central England, was also doubtful. He noted that the British Crime Survey showed that three out of four crimes were never reported to police.

A report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary called On The Record, published two years ago, showed that under-recording of crime by police was "rife", with 24 per cent of offences reported by the public not being included in the crime statistics.

Nottinghamshire Police claimed in 1996 to have cut the number of crimes by 7,788. But a whistleblowing senior officer later came forward to show how more than 9,000 offences had gone unrecorded because officers had discovered a means of preventing crimes from showing on the force computer.

Even if the 10 forces involved in the street crime initiative have been scrupulous in recording figures, there are other factors which could mean the Home Secretary is not giving an accurate portrayal of levels of safety on British streets.

The figures Mr Blunkett released yesterday compared street crime in April, before the initiative began and when street crime was soaring, with the month of August, when 2,000 fewer incidents were recorded.

Much of the rise in street crime (up 31 per cent last year) was fuelled by the theft of mobile phones from children targeted by other children on their way to and from school. Professor Wilson noted that by comparing the April figures with those of August, the Home Office had chosen a month when schoolchildren were at home on holiday and less vulnerable to attack. "The number of opportunities to steal mobile phones will be greatly reduced," he said.

He also pointed out that parents had become more reluctant to buy mobile phones for children, knowing from media coverage that they made young people vulnerable to attack.

In addition, some mobile phone companies have improved their security procedures so that they can disable the chip in a handset as soon as it is reported stolen.

Despite the cynicism with which Mr Blunkett's announcement was received in some quarters, police have tackled the robbery problem with a far greater level of sophistication than simply swamping the streets with officers.

The Metropolitan Police, which recorded a 19 per cent drop in offences of robbery with violence after launching Operation Safer Streets at the start of the year, has deployed traffic police to street crime hotspots to prevent offenders fleeing the scene.

The West Midlands force has used a variety of tactics, including projecting giant pictures of known suspects on to the walls of its headquarters building, and using bright yellow vans to increase police visibility in high-risk areas.

These two forces experience the worst levels of street crime and their apparent successes in tackling the problem are chiefly responsible for the 14 per cent national fall in such offences.

The Thames Valley force has used DNA evidence, taken from saliva on cigarette stubs and half-eaten chocolate bars - found at the scene of street crimes to prosecute offenders.

All forces in the initiative claimed varying degrees of success. West Yorkshire reduced robbery and snatch thefts by 22 per cent, Greater Manchester by 21 per cent, Merseyside by 2 per cent, Avon and Somerset by 20 per cent, South Yorkshire by 25 per cent, Nottinghamshire by 2 per cent, and Thames Valley by 20 per cent. Even in Lancashire, where such offences went up by 9 per cent, the force claimed this was due to a "statistically unusual week" and there was a "clear downward trend" in robbery offences.

Between them, the 10 police forces have to deal with 80 per cent of street crime in England and Wales.

The new Hampshire-based centre for policing excellence, Centrex, has been told to help co-ordinate the initiative and spread successful ideas across all forces.

Mr Blunkett promised that resources would continue to be devoted to tackling street crime after Mr Blair's September deadline. The Home Secretary remains angry at what he regards as media exaggeration of levels of crime.

"People working on the front line know they are getting results," he said. "We are publishing these interim figures now to correct the misleading speculation which is demoralising for the police and, in reinforcing a constant mood of failure, undermines the reassurance which the true position offers the public."

But the problem is partly of the Government's own making. The street robbery problem came to the fore after Mr Blunkett began to challenge police forces over inefficiency and officers started speaking out.

Despite successive falls in overall levels of offending, government ministers allowed the street crime issue (largely linked to mobile phone theft) to draw them into a slugging match with the Opposition over police numbers and being "tough on crime".

The row has put the issue near the top of the political agenda, putting chief constables and ministers under pressure and frightening the public.

In his anxiety to take the heat out of the issue, Mr Blunkett is desperate for evidence, no matter how flimsy, that the robbers are going away.

Street offences - the statistics

In the past year, the main problem for the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, in his efforts to combat crime has been the rising incidence of street offences – pickpocketing, muggings and bag snatches.

But while these have dominated the headlines, Labour's overall record on crime has been impressive.

Using the figures from the British Crime Survey, in which 33,000 people were questioned on their experiences, crime was down by 22 per cent since 1997, by 14 per cent in the past two years, and 2 per cent in the past year.

The number of recorded crimes has also been in overall decline in the past five years – although there was a 2 per cent increase in the year to April.

The area of biggest impact has been property crime, such as burglary and car theft, which accounts for about nine out of 10 offences. Improvements in security and police campaigns against prolific burglars have produced big drops in such crimes.

But the past year has shown a worrying reversal of this trend, with an increase in the incidence of recorded vehicle crime and house break-ins.

There was a 3 per cent rise to 426,872 domestic burglaries recorded in the police figures. This is the first rise in domestic burglary since 1993 and is accompanied by a 5 per cent rise in other kinds of burglary and a 6 per cent rise in thefts other than from cars. Vehicle crime rose by 1.5 per cent.

Part of the reason these two crimes are starting to rise once again is thought to be that police are having to divert resources into tackling street offences.

Police chiefs have privately complained that Mr Blunkett's six-month target to reduce muggings has forced them to cut longer-term projects and invest in quick-fix methods.

Even with Mr Blunkett's best efforts yesterday to emphasise the success in halting the rise in street offences, Labour's message is apparently not yet reaching the public.

Despite a fall in crime, almost one third of those interviewed for the British Crime Survey believed crime had risen "a lot".

While more accurate methods of recording crime have undoubtedly inflated the number of offences, it must be remembered that in 1981 the police recorded just over 3 million crimes, compared with more than 5.5 million today.

Jason Bennetto