Policy issues

Street crime – emergency call for witnesses
The Government's British Crime Survey estimates that in 2008/9 on 852,000 occasions people were violently attacked by complete strangers [1].  This represented a year-on-year rise of over 11% for such attacks. 

Of these 852,000 violent attacks, the Survey estimates that 43% were reported to the police [2] – which would equate to 366,360 of these stranger attacks being officially recorded.

The clear-up rate for those violent crimes that are reported to the police is recorded at 47% [3].  This means that out of the 852,000 stranger attacks last year, the official estimates suggest that 172,189 or 20% will be cleared up.  Without a campaign for witnesses to come forward, we cannot see how this rise in street crime can be reversed or even stemmed.  Unless we start to give witnesses the confidence to engage then we miss the big prize - deterring such attacks.

There are a number of reasons why this analysis of the official estimates should be seen as a best case one.  First, it does not include the occasions when people were mugged last year by a complete stranger – and the official figures suggest that there were 307,500 such incidents last year [4]. 

Secondly, this analysis uses the clear-up rate for all violent crimes – there is no breakdown available between the three types of violence: stranger, acquaintance and domestic.  The relevance of this is that for an offence to be ‘cleared-up’, a suspect needs to have been identified to the police, the police need to have told him he is responsible and a sanction needs to be imposed.  It is self-evident that the identification of the suspect to the police will be a given in violent crimes where the parties are in a domestic relationship or are acquaintances.  In stranger violence, it is this identification more than anything else which will be the highest hurdle.  For these reasons, the clear-up rate for stranger violence will be significantly lower than for these other types of violent crime.  As an illustration, if one assumes that the clear-up rate for stranger crime will be the same as that for robbery[5], then on this basis 77,000 – or 10% - of the stranger attacks that occurred in 2008/9 will have been reported to and will be cleared up by the police.

On a more positive and reassuring note, it is important to emphasise that almost one half of the British Crime Survey incidents of violent crime were not so serious as to cause injury.   The BCS estimates that 52% of victims of stranger attacks – some 443,040 - sustained physical injury.  Of these 144,840 required medical treatment and of these 25,560 required at least an overnight stay in hospital [6]. 

As to the rise in street violence in the past year, this is supported by the findings of the Violence and Society Research Group at Cardiff University which conduct an annual study covering a sample of Emergency Departments and Walk-in Centres in England and Wales.  For the first time in six years, they recorded a rise in attendances at A&E caused by violent crime of 7% in 2008 over the previous year. [7]

 

Discouraging Witnesses – why Yellow Boards have lost their appeal
Yellow Witness Appeal and Crime Prevention Boards have long been seen on the streets of London seeking witnesses who may have seen a serious crime and providing contact details for the relevant officer or station.  The Metropolitan Police described them in its Policy Statement (44/04) as 
“a valuable tool in the detection of crime when appealing for witnesses or information; and prevention of crime when warning the public of local crime issues e.g. pickpockets active in a particular area.  The Metropolitan Police Service will use signs of a standard appearance, produced by the same approved supplier.  All applications for signs will be made the same way, and correctly authorised by an officer of at least the rank of Detective Inspector.  Consideration of the effects of the fear of crime in the community should be balanced against the potential benefits of the use of signs.”

Over the past year these signs have all but disappeared from the streets of London.  In a decision that was not publicised and for which we have been told no background papers are available, the Met Police decided no longer to use witness appeal signs.  Following our enquiries and concerns, it seems that this policy has now been revised and the signs are now only be used for murders and other fatal incidents.  We believe that the reason for this decision was because there is now an overriding target on the police to raise public confidence that crime is being reduced and it was thought that displaying witness appeal signs could undermine meeting this target. As murders and other fatalities do get reported in the media, the Met may have  thought that the use of the signs in these cases would have no adverse impact on public confidence ratings.

While we recognise that public confidence in the fight against crime is a relevant and valid objective, we do not agree that it is a reason to do away with witness appeal boards.  For many people, particularly those who may have witnessed the crime while driving or travelling past or who may have noticed someone or something suspicious immediately before or after the crime occurred, these Yellow Boards  were the key – and often the only – way that the public were engaged.  For now, the Met Police has decided they can do their job better without seeking such help from conscientious members of the public.  As such there is presently no practical way that the Met Police try to engage the public by seeking their help as witnesses.  It is to find effective and practical ways to engage the public as witnesses that we will pilot the use of Google or other mapping schemes for witness alerts – see IT pilots.

 

Violent crime, public confidence and the media
When the British Crime Survey (BCS) was published this summer, the official line was that violent crime is continuing to fall.  Nothing was made of the fact that the 2008/9 Survey estimates for stranger violence had risen by over 11% to 852,000 attacks a year [8]. 

The lack of comment on this rise is a surprise as the BCS has long accepted that people being fairly or very worried about being attacked by a stranger is a major and constant factor in public perceptions about the national crime rate [9].  If this lack of comment was influenced or prompted by concerns about the resulting media reports fuelling public fear of crime, we think it was misguided.

Being attacked by a complete stranger is something that most people will tell friends, family, neighbours and colleagues.  The same cannot be assumed for domestic or acquaintance violence where the victim may feel some sense of shame or culpability.

The BCS estimates [10] that last year 25,560 victims of stranger attacks required one or more night in hospital.  We think it reasonable to assume that news of each such a serious attack by a complete stranger will be related to ten family members, ten friends, ten neighbours and ten work colleagues/contacts who know the victim.  If each of these forty mention the attack to three other people, these informal networks will have communicated the news to over 3 million people.  And this is before considering the other 120,000 stranger attacks where the victim required medical attention (but not overnight in hospital) or the hundred of thousands where the victims were battered and bruised. 

In our view it is these informal networks - rather than media reports – that inform public experiences of and fear about crime.  This is because coming first or second hand, such reports are (a) likely to be assumed to be reliable and (b) likely to bring home the risk of being attacked by a stranger.  The fact is that very few stranger attacks which require hospitalisation get reported in the media.  If they did, with the estimates of over seventy such attacks a day, they would take up a good many column inches.

 

1. BCS 2008/9 - Table 2.01, page 27. [To easily find the right page in the pdf, in the page number function type in 47 - and in the references below add 20 to the actual page number shown].
2. Table 2.09, page 40
3. Table 6.01, page 137.
4. Table 2.01, page 27 estimates there were 375,000 muggings and table 3.14 page 70 estimates 82% of these were by strangers.
5. Table 3.14, page 70 says 79% of robberies are committed by strangers.  Table 6b, p 135 shows the clear-up rate for robbery at 21%.
6. Table 3.06, page 63.  The above figures refer to injuries caused by stranger attacks and does not include those caused by stranger muggings. We estimate that last year 6150 victims of muggings by strangers needed overnight hospital treatment and 27,500 needed other medical treatment.
7.  Violence in England & Wales 2008 (VSRG)
8. This does not include muggings by strangers which BCS estimates amounted to 307,500 in 2008/9. [See table 3.14, page 70].
9. BCS 2007/8 p.130 - the other main indicator is public confidence that the criminal justice system is effective in reducing crime.  This indicator is now 38% (BCS 2008/9 p.106)
10. BCS 2008/9 Table 3.06, page 63.  NB The figures in the text above exclude those who had been mugged by a stranger last year. From the official figures, we estimate that last year 6150 victims of muggings by strangers needed overnight hospital treatment and 27,500 needed other medical treatment.