I am in the United States, and I have heard only indirectly about the recent edition of BBC Newsnight that dealt with crime and policing in London. I understand that, just as, according to the press, Civitas's Cultures and Crimes aroused the 'fury' of the Association of Chief Police Officers (a little intimidating to people of nervous temperament, that, I should think), so the Newsnight item that used Cultures and Crimes has provoked Mr Livingstone into going or threatening to go to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission about the staff who reported and produced it.
Labour's White Paper A Mayor and Assembly for London proposed in 1998 that oversight for the Metropolitan Police should be transferred from the Home Secretary and Parliament to a Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA). In July 2000 the MPA came into existence, replacing the arrangement that that had lasted for the previous 170 years.
Of the 23 members of the MPA, 12 are appointed by Mayor Livingstone, and Mayor Livingstone sets the police budget, which then goes to the London Assembly. There are seven 'independent' members of the MPA, one of whom is appointed directly by the Home Secretary. In 1999 the Greater London Act made the Metropolitan Police Area the same as the area of Mayor Livingstone's jurisdiction, i.e. the area covered by the 32 London boroughs.
In 1997 there had been 27,400 robberies in London. But in 1999 there 36,300. In the next year there were 41,000, and the year after that there were 53,500.
The argument of Cultures and Crimes is that while at the beginning of the 1990s New York recognised there was a problem, and did something about it, in London the academic and news establishment stubbornly denied there was one until the beginning of the 2000s.
The book does not ignore the fact that from the beginning of the 2000s crime dropped in London. It features it. In 2003-2004 the number of robberies had dropped from the peak of 53,500 to 40,600.
All the book says is that we ought to keep in check our euphoria over the wonders of Mayor Livingstone's London. As late as 1990 there were only 36,000 robberies in the whole of England and Wales--'only', that is, when compared with the current London figure. In the mid-1980s the national figure of robberies was 24,000; in the mid-1970s the national figure was 9,000; in the mid-1960s, 3,000. When we go back to the statistics for those years we can begin to properly use the word 'only'.
If I am correctly informed, Mayor Livingstone did not care for the comparison Newsnight drew between London, which has a population of 7.2 million, and New York, which has a population of 8.0 million. I doubt whether the Broadcasting Complaints Commission could make a convincing case, however, that the unfavourable comparison was unfair.
In 1955, when there were under one thousand robberies in the whole of England and Wales, there were 7,400 robberies in New York City. The figure rose to a peak in New York City in 1990, when there were 100,000 robberies. But by the financial year 1996-1997, the figure had been cut to 45,200. The figures for subsequent years show with one slight exception a steady decline: 41,800, 37,500, 34,000, 29,800, 26,900, 27,000, and, for the year 2003-2004, 25,100.
From the vast gap in favour of London in the middle of the 1950s, under one thousand robberies in London as against more than 7,000 in New York, a vast gap in favour of New York had appeared by the middle of the 2000s, 25,000 robberies in New York, as against 41,000 in London, with its smaller population.
By 2003-2004 in New York there were 314 robberies per 100,000 census population. In London there were 567 per 100,000 census population.
Similarly burglaries, which reached a peak of 101,000 in New York in 1993, were cut to 28,600 by 2003-2004, even though the population of the city had risen from 7.3 million to 8.1 million. In London, burglaries reached a higher peak, and peaked much later, at 129,100 in 1999-2000. By 2003-2004 the burglary rate was 376 per 100,000 of the census population in New York. The burglary rate in London in 2003-2004 was still no less than 1,469 per 100,000 of the census population, another reversal of roles of astounding proportions.
It might be embarrassing to Mayor Livingstone and the Metropolitan Police for Newsnight to have pointed this out. But it is scarcely unfair, and some guardians of the means of public communication might even think that the programme was performing no more than its elementary bounden duty in doing so.
Comments (4)
None of the figures mean a thing unless the definitions of particular offences are the same from year to year. Make that clear and all will be clear.
Posted by Stardasher | February 7, 2005 2:16 PM
Posted on February 7, 2005 14:16
Sodem, You're quite right; as with all politicians they are concerned only with what has happened in their own administration. They will not accept responsibility for what has gone before, nor do they wish to ask what has gone wrong. Understandable? Perhaps, but I would prefer that those who have been elected to assume responsibility for our lives and welfare would seek to do a better job - especially when the extent of the problem is so clearly pointed out to them.
Posted by Henry Kaye | February 7, 2005 1:05 PM
Posted on February 7, 2005 13:05
They are not idiots, but they have their positions to consider.
Posted by Sodem | February 6, 2005 8:45 PM
Posted on February 6, 2005 20:45
These figures quoted today, together with the earlier references to the same statistics - both in the last few weeks and over recent years - cause me to be completely baffled by the reactions of the responsible authorities. Are they complete and utter idiots that they cannot or will not accept the truth of what the facts illustrate?
Posted by Henry Kaye | February 6, 2005 9:48 AM
Posted on February 6, 2005 09:48