Crime poll

[ewx]

It looks like my readers have fairly realistic view of crime, at least compared to the country at large: 4 selected "stayed the same", 9 "fallen" and 16 "don't know". (Which is a somewhat suspicious sequence of numbers.) The poll was inspired by a magazine article on crime figures, fear of crime and what is to be done; apparently crime has been falling lately, but around three quarters of people believe it is rising.

How on earth should a government respond sensibly to this? (It sez here that...) what they've actually done is make fear of crime a performance indicator for the police; which surely takes resources away from actually preventing or solving crimes and puts them into PR instead. (It might do nothing if the police took the view that reducing the fear of crime was best achieved by carrying on as before but (i) this evidently isn't the case (ii) they'd end up being criticized for not meeting performance targets).

A sensible point that it does make is that exaggerated fear of crime might be making people behave in a way that makes them less likely to suffer it (noting that indeed people who fear it least tend to suffer it most, though they only offer semi-anecdotal evidence for this in the article itself); but while this effect might have its advantages, it also risks distorting public policy (like the home secretary isn't authoritarian enough already).

Perhaps what we Really Need is a PR campaign that convinces people that if they're going to have an opinion on something they should at least take the trouble to make sure they're not believing the opposite of easily discoverable facts. (You could call it "education"...)