At last, some good news: crime is falling
Although I said “at last”, in fact crime has been falling – in both the UK and many other developed nations – for decades and I last blogged about this fascinating, and welcome, trend, about a year ago here.
This week, we have the news that, in England & Wales last year, crime again fell, regardless of whether you measure it just by crime reported to the police or the wider measure of incidents captured in the official crime survey.
And the fall is in all categories of crime: violent as well as non-violent. The only exception is theft from the person, the increase in which category is largely in London because of mobile phone thefts.
Statisticians say the crime rate has halved since it peaked in 1995 and appears to be at its lowest level for more than 30 years.
But nobody is sure why. In this commentary piece, it states:
“There is no shortage of competing explanations for the crime rate falling by half since its peak in 1995 – from the removal of lead from paint and petrol, to smartphones killing teenage boredom. But most criminologists are surprised that the economic downturn has not reversed the long-term trend.”