Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
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13 DECEMBER 2004
Q40 Mr Jenkins: We are dealing here not
with looking at the perpetrators of crime but at the victims of
crime, and we are trying to establish how we can make the victim
more secure and raise awareness. Many of these schemes are very
effective in raising pride in the community and making people
more aware of the projects, and yet the amount of money put into
that according to the report is miniscule. Why do we not spend
more in that approach, rather than targeting the offender and
looking after the offender?
Professor Wiles: If I may just
say something about where that money comes from, one of the things
you need to take into account when looking at burglary prevention
is that most people will provide burglar protection for themselves.
For example, we have identified that they are much more likely
to do that just after they have moved house and have been deliberately
targeting advice at people at the time when they move house. What
we have been trying to concentrate government money on is getting
that same protection for people who, for all sorts of reasons,
might be less likely to do that. The other answer to your problem
is, as you say, that we have got very effective work for relatively
speaking a small investment, and that is one of the successes
of the crime reduction programme.
Mr Lewis: Again, I just do not
believe that these are either/ors; I think we have to go on looking
at how we can reduce individual crime targets—
Q41 Mr Jenkins: I will tell you why it
is either/or: in the world we live in, the taxpayers' world, we
have to pay for it. If we have to spend a pound we have to decide
the best option to spend that pound on. I would like two pounds
and spend it on both, but I only have one pound. If you have only
got a pound, which one are you going to spend it on? That is what
I am asking you? From my point of view it is more effective to
spend it to raise awareness amongst victims or potential victims
than to spend it on the criminal.
Mr Lewis: We spend our time trying
to decide how to spend that one pound too, because we have not
got two pounds. I do not think you can simply say you are going
to spend even that one pound all here or all there. For example,
we are spending quite a few taxpayers' pounds at the moment with
our advertising campaign, which I am sure some members of the
Committee will have seen, which is simply encouraging people to
take the most basic precautions in terms of their homes and vehicles.
I may get the exact figure wrong, and Professor Wiles will correct
me if I do, but from memory somewhere between 15-20% of all burglaries
take place through unlocked or open doors or windows. Trying to
get people to take the most basic precautions, to lock their doors
and windows, by using advertisements that are eye-catching and
which grab their attention, is important. Equally though, we know
there are individuals who commit very large amounts of burglary,
and focusing on them is of value too.
Q42 Mr Jenkins: We have accepted that.
What about individuals committing crime? My town has just been
rated very highly on the violence scale, and it is the most violent
place since Dodge City. The reason for that is that the town has
a very high number of high CCTV cameras and a high police presence,
particularly at the weekends. They get to the scene very quickly.
We have found with great difficulty that the number of people
who have been assaulted—and we have a CCTV record of them
being assaulted—when they get there refuse to press charges.
It is logged as a crime, so we cannot proceed, although we have
proceeded in some cases with assault on the individual, and that
is what we have in mind when you talk about the British Crime
Survey—in that case where you must self-determine that you
are the victim of an assault. I have given you a cast-iron example
here of the number of people, which is probably as much as 25%,
being assaulted refuse to say they have been assaulted when we
have the evidence there, and then the British Crime Survey shows
the numbers are going down because people no longer feel they
are victims of crime. What confidence can I have?
Professor Wiles: I do not think
that is quite the case. One of the things we know from the British
Crime Survey and that we have been able to track over 20 years
is how far people who have been victims have reported to the police,
pressed charges and so on. That is exactly one of the things we
can look at. You have just given a very good example of what I
was saying earlier on. One of the reasons why police-recorded
crime has gone up is that if you have more CCTV cameras, you will
get an increase in police-recorded crime because a lot more of
it is being seen by third parties and recorded. The problem is
converting that into successfully dealt-with crime, as you were
saying; but those people are still reporting it to the British
Crime Survey. They are still saying, "Yes, I was hit".
We do not ask people in the British Crime Survey, "Have you
been the victim of an assault?" We ask: "Has anybody
hit you?" We then go on to look at that, starting with that
basic point. One of the interesting things is looking at changes
and reporting them, and one of the things we know from the last
few years is that the public overall are now increasingly likely
to report events to the police. That does mean that police-recorded
crime goes up, but overall that is a good thing.
Q43 Mr Jenkins: I will tell you what
happens in my part of the world. You get a break-in or car damage
or a car stolen, and people will phone the police up to report
it. The police ring back and say, "here is your crime number",
which those people need to claim off the insurance. They expect
nothing more of the police other than to be given the crime number.
How do you think that fits in with the perception of beating crime
in this country?
Mr Lewis: That is one reason why
people report vehicle crime because they need to do so in order
to make a valid insurance claim, and so what you say is accurate.
However, I really do not think that we should regard that as meaning
the police believe that that is the sum total of their job. A
huge amount of investment in the police service over recent years—and
we now step outside the bounds of this report—has gone into
improving the ability of the police and to reduce crime. You have
seen the National Intelligence model, and so on. Of course, there
is too much crime that goes undetected, and everybody would accept
that. Actually, along with the advances you have seen here through
the Crime Reduction Programme, there have been very substantial
advances in the overall effectiveness of the police service in
reducing crime.
Q44 Jim Sheridan: What crimes are excluded
from the British Crime Survey?
Professor Wiles: The British Crime
Survey includes all crimes against adult individuals and households.
It does not include crimes against commercial or industrial victims
or against those under 16, or those who are dead, obviously.
Q45 Jim Sheridan: Do they include murder
or rape?
Professor Wiles: It cannot include
murder because you cannot interview people who are dead, obviously.
Rape is included, as is domestic violence.
Q46 Jim Sheridan: This subject, as with
many other subject, is open to interpretation or misinterpretation
particularly by politicians. The general public are sick of politicians
swapping insults, saying "I am the good guy, you are the
bad guy": why can the professionals not come up with a system
telling us quite clearly that crime figures are up or they are
down?
Professor Wiles: As far as the
individual householder is concerned, we have the British Crime
Survey. What I am saying is that it is not just the view of government
but the view of most researchers in universities doing research
on crime as well that the British Crime Survey is the best measure
of trends over time.
Q47 Jim Sheridan: It is open to interpretation.
Professor Wiles: I do not think
it is, no. It is a large-scale, scientifically designed survey,
and it gives you quite clear measures of change in crime all the
time.
Q48 Jim Sheridan: Why do the politicians,
particularly the Prime Minister and his opposite number, continue
to trade insults about who is right and who is wrong.
Professor Wiles: I am not sure
I can comment on the behaviour of the Prime Minister or any of
the rest of them. The British Crime Survey is a well-constructed,
scientifically designed survey. It is a survey and therefore it
has margins around it which are well understood and analysed.
It clearly shows that crime in this country has been going down.
The other reason I have confidence in that is because crime has
been going down in many other countries as well; so we are not
just getting a strange aberration here; there is a trend in many
developed countries.
Q49 Jim Sheridan: How do we compare per
capita with other European countries?
Professor Wiles: It depends which
European countries you are talking about. If you are talking about
the western European countries, those in the EU before it was
extended, we have a crime rate roughly similar to the Dutch, and
a crime rate only slightly higher than many other EU countries.
That difference has been there for some time. Some of that is
to do with the fact that we had—though fortunately it has
been going down significantly—a particularly high rate of
car crimes, both compared to European countries and to the United
States of America. The reduction has been therefore very welcome.
Q50 Jim Sheridan: In terms of a league
table, where would we sit with other European countries?
Professor Wiles: I cannot answer
that question at the moment. We are waiting for the results of
the International Victim Crime Survey, which is precisely designed
to give us that relative ranking. The last crime survey showed
that we were still about a third of the way down that. The high
crime countries, particularly for violence, were Australia and
New Zealand, and then you tend to get countries like Holland and
the United Kingdom; and then you have lower crime countries further
down—including the United States, by the way, which, apart
from its murder rate has a lower crime rate than the United Kingdom,
and has had for a long time.
Q51 Jim Sheridan: On page 18 you talk
about the Bobby Van. I am sure the people of Bexley are absolutely
delighted that burglary has reduced by some 50% because of the
Bobby Van. Have the crime figures gone up in neighbouring towns
to Bexley? I assume that the criminals have not just stopped because
of the Bobby Van and will have gone to neighbouring towns.
Professor Wiles: Absolutely. As
I said earlier on, most of our evaluations of geographically based
schemes like the Crime Reduction Scheme looked very closely both
at the possibility of displacement, and diffusion. Overall, summarising
those findings across a whole range of different schemes that
we looked at, you occasionally get a small amount of displacement,
but the net effect is a reduction in crime. You also get a small
amount of diffusion; that is, if you do a crime reduction programme
in one area, you find the immediately surrounding area gets some
benefits from that either because the potential victims are talking
to each other and taking remedial steps, or what we also know
is that you get a drop in burglary even before the programme is
implemented. The initial publicity is sending a message out to
potential offenders.
Q52 Jim Sheridan: The burglars in Bexley
have given up—
Professor Wiles: Quite a lot of
them have given up because, otherwise, the national rate of burglary
would not be going down. We are talking about less offences overall,
less offenders committing fewer—
Q53 Jim Sheridan: Neighbouring towns
and cities also benefit from the Bobby Van as well, do they?
Professor Wiles: I do not think
they necessarily benefited from that particular Bobby Van; they
certainly benefited from all the work that everybody has been
doing on reducing crime.
Mr Lewis: Can I add something
that we have learnt from this whole programme. It is a sad fact,
but a fact nonetheless, that if you are a victim of crime you
are more likely then to become a victim again in the future. Therefore,
what we are doing much more of is that when someone is a victim
of crime, as well as helping them in terms of that crime and to
record it and detect it, we are giving advice to that individual
as to how they can seek to avoid becoming a victim of crime a
second time. That is now done much more routinely and widely than
before because we understand that better.
Q54 Jim Sheridan: If the Bobby Van was
so successful in Bexley in reducing burglary, are you talking
of rolling it out throughout the country?
Mr Lewis: No, we are not talking
of rolling that specific thing out throughout the country. That
is why, through magazines like Crime Reduction News we
say, "if you have been involved in a project that other practitioners
can learn from, please get in touch".
Q55 Jim Sheridan: People do not read
magazines. If you have a Bobby Van that has proved to be successful
with a 50% reduction, why not roll it out throughout the country?
Professor Wiles: What the Bobby
Van was doing was what many other areas have been doing as well,
and it is a combination of providing advice to householders on
how they can help reduce their risk; and, secondly, as Lewis has
said, repeat victimisation is a significant part of the overall
crime problem. Your risk of being victimised gets greater each
time you are victimised. It is not just advice, but where people
have been victimised several times a large number of forces now
provide protection either by "cocoon" neighbourhood
watch, where immediate neighbours of the victim keep a special
eye out and help this person not be victimised again; or in some
cases forces loan to burglary victims temporary burglar alarms
to fit in their house.
Q56 Jim Sheridan: The Bobby Van is not
about delivering leaflets; it is a tangible example of police
doing what they should be doing on the streets. That has delivered
a 50% reduction in burglary in Bexley.
Professor Wiles: Yes.
Q57 Jim Sheridan: Why are you not using
a successful project in other towns and cities?
Professor Wiles: I am saying we
are. The sort of things they were doing in the Bobby Van are exactly
what many other police forces are doing. They might not call it
a Bobby Van, but they are doing the same thing—the sort
of things I have just been spelling out, the kinds of things that
many police forces are doing. That is why we have burglaries going
down.
Q58 Jim Sheridan: Is that offence going
down by 50%?
Professor Wiles: Not necessarily.
You get variations in different areas. Some areas are much more
difficult to get crime down than others. It is more difficult
to get crime down in a high crime area than it is in a low crime
area.
Mr Lewis: Let me give you another
example of why we do not say, "right everybody; introduce
the Bobby Van" because the problem is different in different
locations. If you look for example at some inner cities with high
levels of student accommodation, students are particularly vulnerable
to crime, particularly at certain times of the year. Therefore,
we have learnt a huge amount over recent years through some of
these programmes and elsewhere about how you get students to guard
against crime. When they arrive particularly for their first year
at university they often do not have uppermost in their minds
securing their own personal property. You can make major, major
inroads into student crime in some areas. We do need horses for
courses. We do need to adapt and allow people to find their own
routes; but we do need to give them the information from which
they can make individual decisions.
Q59 Jim Sheridan: In regard to different
remedies for different areas, is there any link to higher levels
of crime in areas of deprivation and poverty as opposed to other
areas?
Professor Wiles: The technical
answer to that question is that the correlation between deprivation
and high crime is about 0.8, which is a fancy way of saying that
the majority of high crime areas also suffer from significant
deprivation.
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