Criminal statistics

Yesterday the Scottish Government announced a two per cent decrease in recorded crime for 2008-09, prompting one Nationalist blogger (who on compassionate grounds should perhaps remain nameless) to proclaim: "Gordon Brown makes empty promises at Brighton - Kenny MacAskill delivers the real thing."

But recorded crime fell by five per cent in England and Wales during the same period - even Richard Baker noticed that one! Indeed, in 2007-08 the Scottish figures fell by a significant eight per cent, but can this plausibly be attributed to the election of an SNP Government? Surely not: the administration only took the reins well into the 2007-08 period, and it's difficult to think of what it did during its early months in office that could have resulted in a drop in crime of this magnitude. Similarly, the headline 29-year-low claim is merely the culmination of a downward trend evident since the early 1990s - thus hardly attributable to the SNP - and reflects a pattern largely similar to that south of the border.

Thus the Nationalist slant on this doesn't really stack up, but are the statistics particularly useful in any case? Although the numbers clearly have some efficacy, on the other hand a few weeks ago I suggested that reductions in crimes such as vehicle theft may be attributable primarily to better security equipment being fitted by manufacturers - whereas any numpty with a screwdriver could TWOC a car twenty years ago, immobilisers and suchlike make the task significantly more difficult today - rather than to anything done by politicians or police, and that other crimes such as vandalism may increasingly go unreported.

Of course, if we're safer in our houses and our cars are less likely to get nicked then that's clearly good news, but much of the so-called low-level nuisance and anti-social behaviour which concerns so many people - and, indeed, makes the lives of so many so unpleasant - doesn't even register as crime and thus won't be reflected in the glowing statistics. A recent case in point is that of the Pilkington family, who suffered years of torment at the hands of youths in Leicestershire, and this culminated in the mother killing herself and her disabled daughter. In this case police effectively ignored constant complaints from Mrs Pilkington, and council anti-social behaviour officers and social workers were next to useless. No crime there then.

And, of course, as with Brandon Muir in Dundee, this kind of pompously termed multi-agency approach can clearly result merely in institutional buck-passing due to the diffusion of responsibility and communications breakdown, exacerbated, of course, by fawning politicians who hide with officialdom behind a pretence of accountability.