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Blue lamp

Monday, 28th July 2008

I just caught up with Danny Finkelstein's column on the dispute over crime statistics:

It is suggested that we are better off trusting our own instincts; that our own experience tells us that things are getting worse - whatever the figures say we “know” that crime is going up. What nonsense... I would say that people are rejecting the crime figures simply because they don't want them to be true.

Yet one thing that strikes me time and again is that people are more and more disgruntled about the service they get from the police. I've recounted my own unhappy experiences before. And at the weekend, when I was enjoying the hospitality at a party in one of the most idyllic parts of the Wye Valley, I got into a conversation with a woman who lives in a crime-ridden Midlands city. Her husband - a teacher - recently saw youths attacking a nearby corner shop. When he rang the police, he was told no one was available, and that the shopkeepers should close up and sit it out. As far as I recall, she said it took 20 minutes for the phone to be answered, although it's possible she was talking about another case (there were lots and lots of them.)

Her husband works with a dauntingly large number of dysfunctional kids rom mining communities where the pits have closed and jobs have disappeared. On one occasion the pupils - who are unruly at the best of time - went on the rampage, and the teachers resorted to calling the local station. Again, there was no one available to help.

I hear this kind of thing time and again. Is it possible that I don't hear the good news stories because people prefer to harp on about the negatives? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Are the police falling down on the job, or are we asking them to do too much?