UK crime convictions fall to 5% yet crime not on Tory leadership candidate’s agenda

Despite UK crime convictions falling to five per cent and has the same time crime hit a 20-year high neither Tory leadership candidate has made the issue an integral part of their campaign, rather focussing on the same issues BREXIT, the NHS, immigration and taxes.

Statements issued overnight and today Saturday, July 23 show that neither candidate has made the issue of crime a key plank of their leadership campaign.

The opposition has however made a big noise over the statistics, which were released on Friday saying that they prove the Tory party is soft on crime.

In the year to March 2022, crime rose a further four per cent over the previous high in 2019/20 when more than 6.1 million crimes were reported.

Whilst the crime rate continues to rise unabated, what should be worrying the candidates for the job of prime minister is the falling conviction rate.

During the same period roughly five per cent of alleged crimes resulted in someone being charged within a year of it being reported, but not all were convicted.

A Labour spokesperson said that the numbers prove that hundreds of thousands of criminals were getting away with what they describe as “appalling crimes” with many left to re-offend.

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that knife crime, theft and domestic abuse all increased in the year to March, although knife crime fell by roughly ten per cent against those recorded in 2019/20.

Many forms of crime are on the rise though and a number have reached their highest numbers ever recorded. These include rape offences, sexual offences, stalking and harassment offences, and all violence against the person offences.

Domestic abuse offences rose by more than eight per cent over the previous high in 2019/20, although this may be down to improved policing and reporting rather than a genuine increase.

According to the Sun seven out of every ten offices did not make an arrest during the year in question, however, that figure may be down to the type of role the officers perform

Diana Fawcett, Chief Executive at the charity Victim Support, told LBC: “With the highest number of cases for 20 years coming into the criminal justice system, we need urgent action to address the backlog of cases, to ensure that those who’ve had the courage to report a crime get the justice they deserve.”

Billy Gazard of the ONS said: “Sexual offences recorded by the police were at the highest level recorded within a 12-month period in the year ending March 2022, a 32 per cent increase from the previous year.

“These changes may reflect a number of factors including the impact of high-profile cases and campaigns on victims’ willingness to report incidents.”

Sex offences recorded in England and Wales have doubled in seven years and rape offences in six years.

Burglary and theft fell in comparison to 2019/20, however, it is well known that many cases are not reported across the UK with victims saying there is often no point in doing so.

While theft offences jumped by 15 per cent to 1.5 million in 2021/22, this is still below pre-pandemic levels, when the number topped two million.

Figures published on Thursday by the Home Office show that just 5.6 per cent of offences in England and Wales in 2021/22 resulted in a charge. That trend has continued downwards for several years and now stands at around a third of what it did in 2014/15.

According to the Home Office, the trends are due in part to better recording of crime and therefore do not always reflect a real increase in the rate.

The falling trend in UK crime convictions to around five per cent follows the reduction a few years earlier in policing budgets. That reduction during the period of austerity resulted in the number of police officers falling across the country.

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