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Courtesy of the Telegraph
A few years ago, Theresa May set out to make a hard-hitting speech about how too many law-abiding black men were being stopped and searched by the police. Her officials got to work on it, but soon hit a problem: the only in-depth study showed that, if anything, white men were the ones being singled out. There was no evidence to suggest any kind of racial discrimination. It was all a bit embarrassing, so reference to this study was removed from the draft of the speech – and the then home secretary went ahead anyway with her spirited j’accuse. Black men, she said, are up to seven times more likely to be stopped and searched. It cannot continue.
Politically, the speech was a great success. It was a potent charge, and it helped to establish Mrs May as a reformer with a social conscience. Her figure was technically correct: when compared with the general population, young black men are far more likely to be searched. It’s just that if you look at those on the streets of an evening (as the Home Office had done), the bias vanishes. Not that the police dared point this out: they heard and obeyed. The number of stop-and-searches conducted by police This comes at an inconvenient time for the Conservatives. Until now, they’d been able to argue that there was a kind of domestic peace dividend: fewer crimes meant fewer police were needed and the Home Office budget fell by about a fifth. As home secretary, Mrs May seemed to achieve the impossible. Every year, she cut the police budget and police numbers. Every year, they complained. Every year, crime fell. It seemed rather miraculous, but those of us who applauded Mrs May as she wielded the axe so elegantly have reason to pause for thought now. Violent crime is up by 20 per cent over the last year; robbery by 29 per cent. To be sure, improvements in police records will account for much of the rise – but not all of it. The Government is always pointing to the Crime Survey, which still shows things improving, but it’s becoming far harder to claim that police figures are a freakish statistical blip. And anyway, the Crime Survey asks people about their own experience – so it will never properly pick up the rare but serious crimes (like knife attacks) that seem on the rise.more than halved, but this raised an awkward question: what effect would this have on knife crime?
The latest figures arrived yesterday. Recorded knife crime rose 21 per cent in the last year across England; the number of murders in London rose 19 per cent. Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, has admitted that her officers might have become fearful of stopping and searching suspects. They wonder whether, if accused of racism, they’d be supported by their bosses. This is just one part of a strange overall picture: after falling for almost 20 years, crime – in almost all its recorded forms – is rising again.