Skip to main content

Unreported crime

Last Friday, as a local ward Councillor, I went to one of Charles Clarke's community meetings. Much talk from
the platform about crime levels in Norwich going down. ...But these are
of course reported crime levels. Those in the audience at a meeting like this
are presumably more community-spirited than most residents - that's why they turned up.
But again and again, when asked, they said that they had NOT reported to the
police (or to anyone) the crimes and ASB incidents they then related to
us. . .
I suspect that crime levels are NOT going down, but may indeed be
going up - only REPORTED CRIME is going down.
It's true that people tend significantly to overestimate their risk of being victims of crime (this has a lot to
do with bad journalism). And it's true that, compared to many other parts of the world, Norwich is a very
safe place. But maybe if we were more realistic about how much crime is not reported these days, we would
not be so complacent about just how safe (or not) our streets and citizens are. There is a lot of crime and anti-social-behaviour
going on which is just not being reported.

Comments

None of the above said…
and next week Rupert brings you:

Pope in catholic claim

Bear found shitting in wood

and Dog bites man
27 January 2010 at 22:46
Rupert said…
;-)

But the point is: None of the worthies on the panel at the meeting in question saw this obvious truth. Charles Clarke kept on patting himself on the back for crime 'falling', even as audience-member after audience-member said that they had recently been a victim of crime and had not reported it (in fact, most of them seemed surprised at the very idea that they might have found it worth it bothering to report it).
30 January 2010 at 19:12
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More on why 20's plenty -- without need for any further 'trials'...

There are a number of reasons for setting a default speed of 20mph throughout the 'unclassified' road network in residential parts of a city such as Norwich. Most important perhaps is that of driver recognition as to what the speed limit is. If you have 20 mph as the default then you not only establish this limit clearly, but you also adjust the driver's recognition as to what is the "normal" speed in such residential areas. The most important aspect is that drivers set 20 mph as the norm with those 30 mph areas or roads being seen as 50% faster, rather than seeing 30 mph as the norm with 20 mph as 33% slower. The psychological adjustment of normal speeds in residential areas is key to the success of reducing speeds and therefore danger to pedestrians and cyclists. Therefore any trial, pilot or whatever, that only implements 20 mph in a tiny proportion of the city is not modelling 20's Plenty in any realistic manner.   When considering the val...
2 comments
Read more

Stansted: a reflection

The key question, in relation to protsts like that at Stansted last week, is: which side are you on? Are you on the side of big corporations profiteering from completely unsustainable climate-destructive behaviour? Or are you on the side of people with no vested interests just making a non-violent stand, at considerable cost to their own time and money, for the sake of all our futures? It doesn't seem to me a hard judgement to make... Rupert Read Green Party Councillor, Norwich, and Lead Candidate for Eastern Region for the Greens in the 2009 Euro-elections. DID YOU KNOW: A vote of about 10% across Eastern Region on June 4 2009 would be enough to get me elected to the European Parliament... http://rupertsread.blogspot.com
2 comments
Read more