This week the Home Office published a new report entitled ‘The Drivers and Perceptions of Anti-Social Behaviour’.  It attempts to clarify the difference between an objective measure of antisocial behaviour and perceived antisocial behaviour, as well as delineating strategies at neighbourhood and national levels.

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The row rumbles on over the misuse of crime statistics, in which everybody from the BBC, to the National Statistics watchdog, to the Prime Minister himself  has joined in to castigate the Tory election machine, and to claim that there is no possibility of using police-recorded figures to compare the government’s record on police-recorded crimes of violence pre- and post-2002. Read the rest of this entry »

We were informed this week that Jon Venables, one of James Bulger’s murderers, has violated his parole and is back behind bars. We don’t know what he did, we don’t know how long it’s been since his return to prison, and we don’t know how long he will remain there.

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Long-time gang leader and underworld ‘godfather’ Colin Gunn was back on the front pages this week as an inquest jury finally closed a case on his ordered execution of an elderly couple in 2004.

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New statistics on knife crime this week showed that children as young as 10, the minimum age of criminal responsibility, were taken to court last year accused of knife crime offences.

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As the well-documented phenomenon of cyber-bullying gathers pace in society at large, even the concrete walls of prison are apparently not providing barriers to its advancement. 

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