Prisoners being released from HMP Pentonville, London, 10 September 2024. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA View image in fullscreen Prisoners being released from HMP Pentonville, London, 10 September 2024. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA Opinion Prisons and probation Burnham won’t fix our prisons crisis until he dares to be honest with the public about crime Polly Toynbee Most crime figures have drastically fallen, but people don’t believe it. It’s no wonder when politicians whip up emotions and attempt to bend the law
A n astounding change is happening to life in England and Wales that most people don’t know about, and when they are told they don’t believe it. Most crime, including violence, has fallen by a remarkable 90% over the past 30 years. But only 6% of people believe it, while 61% think crime is going up . This great denial is the background cause of the prison overflow crisis, as politicians (of all parties) stir up voters to demand ever higher sentences as the imaginary cure to their imaginary soaring crime.
All western European countries enjoy this same remarkable social improvement, with research over decades offering myriad reasons why: populations spending longer in education, CCTV, better security for cars and homes, and young people staying at home to play video games of fantasy crime instead of entertaining themselves with the real thing. Removing brain-harming lead from petrol and abortion of unwanted foetuses at risk of future child neglect are other possible explanations.
This generation inhabits a far less violent society, with many fewer homicides, thefts, burglaries and serious violent crimes, but also far less casual social violence in brawls and punch-ups. Older folk nostalgic for an orderly golden age when no one bothered locking their front door usually situate it just beyond their own memories, in their grandparents’ halcyon days. But radical social change leads to less acceptance of any violence. Online fraud and cybercrime are the ones that are steeply rising , though they are committed by quite different criminals.
The nature of violence has changed, too. Official statistics from the national crime survey for England and Wales show that 65% of violent crime incidents result in no injury to the victim. (Though “no injury” can still mean people are seriously harmed by terrifying threats of violence or by sexual abuse and intimidation , of course.) There remains a dissonance between the way life is and the crime people fear.
Single landmark horror cases – from the Moors murderers to Fred West and Axel Rudakubana – are seared for ever into the nation’s collective nightmares. Too often these freak incidents drive our sentencing policy. Five years after the trial of the 10-year-old killers of James Bulger, the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act abolished doli incapax – the requirement to prove that a child under 14 knew their act was morally wrong. The toughening of sentencing law time and again in response to public outrage at particular horrors, with no balancing context, is a root cause of overflowing prisons.
It’s happening again in the case of two of those responsible for the heartrending death of PC Andrew Harper. Harper’s family, and every chief constable in England and Wales, protested vigorously that they were due to be released under new rules after serving only half of their 13-year manslaughter sentences. The prime minister has asked the justice secretary to find a way to ensure the men stay inside: the law m…