22nd January 2010

Crime Figures Show Burglary and Robbery Are Down

Issue

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Key points

Today's crime figures show burglary and robbery are down despite the recession. This comes the day after a fall in unemployment - and is a stark contrast to the Tory recession of the 1990s.

The Tories would have stood by and allowed crimes like burglary and robbery to rise like they did in the downturns of the 1980s and 1990s. During the 1990s recession, acquisitive crime - burglary, robbery and theft - rose by 19 per cent in 1990 and 18 per cent in 1991. In stark contrast, during the current recession burglary has actually fallen by 8 per cent and robbery has fallen by 9 per cent - with robbery at knife point down by 16 per cent.

If crime had followed the pattern of the previous two recessions, over 100,000 more homes would have been burgled this year, and over 15,000 more people would have been robbed this year, compared to what has actually happened. So we have reversed previous trends, and broken the link between crime and the economy that many confidently asserted would re-appear. Just as we have seen far lower unemployment than expected, far lower repossessions than expected, far lower corporate failures than expected.

The Tories are determined to run this country down but in fact we have the lowest murder rate for twenty years. Local perceptions of anti-social behaviour are at their lowest since 2001. Confidence in the police is rising right across the country.

This has not happened by accident - but by the brilliant work of many dedicated police and community support officers up and down the country - backed by a range of strong and innovative government programmes - on burglary, on robbery, on retail crime, on knife crime. These are the dedicated police officers and CSOs - 16,000 more police, 16,000 more CSOs than when Labour came to power - who we pledged to protect in the PBR: a pledge the Tories refuse to match.

The Tories want to make it harder for the Police to use DNA evidence to catch and convict criminals. As Alan Johnson said today, "The cold facts are that in the last year for which we have full records 23 killers and rapists would have remained free to kill and rape again if we had adopted the Conservative proposals."