CRIMINAL CONFUSION

Charles Mosley believes

official crime figures are a work of fiction

THE latest crime figures brought a de- cidedly confused response. Some papers hailed them as encouraging, since the overall crime rate has dropped. Others followed the Police Federation in seeing them as 'horrific', since violence and rape are up. The soberest reaction was to view the overall decline as useful to Douglas Hurd in confronting the law-and-order brigade at this month's Tory Conference.

Even non-leader-writers made some odd comments. A call for tougher sentencing from the chairman of the Police Federation provoked a claim by the Prison Reform Trust that potential criminals are deterred by fear of being caught rather than of severe punishment. This assumes capture is an abstract existential state separable from what happens to you afterwards. A Home Office spokeswoman told me her department agreed with the Police Federa- tion. On the face of it that is constitutional- ly improper since the Police Federation was demanding a change in sentencing policy and the executive should not be seen calling the tune to the judiciary.

The trouble is, crime figures resemble an Escher drawing, an optical illusion telling different stories depending on how you look at it.

When I reported an admittedly minor case of graffiti on the front of my block of flats recently, the local police did not even bother to log it, saying airily that it was unsolvable and they were overstretched. Perhaps it is; perhaps they are. But that is no way to win the public support without which proper policing is impossible. Some police forces will not accept telephone reports of crimes, insisting that the citizen either make the report to the station in person, an impossible stipulation for the housebound, or wait until the local bobby on the beat calls round. It may be a bit late by then.

Even when a crime is properly reported it may be neglected. Up until the last two years all reported crimes were at least investigated. Now the police award them points, with more marks for seriousness and 'solvability'. Grievous bodily harm and rape, for example, rate highly, though only after years of feminist agitation was the latter generally reclassified as rape proper rather than the less serious indecent assault. But other offences (a minor mug- ging, or criminal damage in the form of graffiti) may score dismally because of low solvability as well as their innate pettiness. Consequently they will not even rate pre- liminary investigation.

The most staggering statistic is perhaps police manpower, up by nearly half in the last 20 years whereas the population is only four per cent larger.

Anyway, assessment of crimes frequent- ly reflects little more than public concern, a decidedly fickle element. Until recently certain drugs-related offences were not reportable to the Home Office, so they generated no crime figures in official national statistics. Since police effective- ness is measured crudely by totting up numbers of crimes reported together with numbers cleared up there was no mileage for the police in putting much effort into investigating them. But as one experienced policeman told me, `Once the kids started dying, there was a public outcry.' Child abuse is the other topical concern. Only since 1983 have gross indecency with a

'We're having a woman- priest hole in- stalled.'

child and trafficking in controlled drugs been included as notifiable offences in national figures.

My communicative policeman told me that on several occasions in his experience a minor crime was recorded in a separate book from the official log. If cleared up it was then fed into the official log; if not, it remained officially unrecorded and local police prowess was unaffected statistically.

Occasionally one reported `crime' covers two or three incidents in a locality — a stolen bottle of milk in one street, a piece of graffiti round the corner in another, a slashed car tyre in a third — on the assumption that one person committed all three.

The police are not the only ones moving the goal posts. Earlier this year Kensington and Chelsea Council started prosecuting as thefts rather than as traffic offences fraudulent applications for residents' park- ing permits. Sd far nine people have been found guilty, an insignificant figure in itself, but, since there were none in that particular category before it, represents an infinitely huge percentage increase. Not that it will show up in official figures as anything but part of the amorphous categ- ory 'theft'. The point is, the Home Office cannot say how many other councils do the same thing. The Home Office is at least frank about its lack of grip: it also admits there was a computer programming error in assessing 1985's statistics.

The latest figures show fewer reported burglaries, despite a Home Office conten- tion that a greater percentage of burglaries are now being reported. But the higher figures for violence could stem from would-be burglars taking out on humans their frustration at louder alarms, heavier locks and more vigilant neighbourhood watch schemes. Most burglars are very young. So the fewer burglaries could be directly related to more muggings and steamings, which must surely be carried out by the agile young rather than broken- winded old lags. This is possible, but by no means the whole story, a crime expert says unofficially.

Even inflation has a bearing on crime figures. Vandalism and similar offences involving less than £20 worth of havoc are recorded separately from the big stuff in the criminal damage category. In consequ- ence the number of offences recorded for petty criminal damage for the last ten years or so looks superficially static. But what cost £20 to put right in 1977 now costs more like £50-£100, so vandalism of this sort has probably increased colossally proportion- ate to the population. In any case the British Crime Survey suggests the police record under ten per cent of instances.

That may account for the graffiti on my block of flats generating yawns down at the police station. It also suggests press report- ing of Home Office crime figures might more appropriately be handled by the fiction reviewer than the news desk.