Successive Home Secretaries reassure us: crime is falling. Just look at the official figures, they say.
But every time we hear these pronouncements, we scratch our heads and ask really? Can we actually believe this?
These claims rely on the Crime Survey for England and Wales the long-standing benchmark used to measure crime.
But that survey excludes key offences like shoplifting and cyber fraud.
GB NEWS
|Nigel Farage said "Every time we hear these pronouncements, we scratch our heads and ask really? Can we actually believe this?"
If you look instead at police-recorded crime over the same period, you’ll see a sharp rise in a wide range of offences.
A major poll out this weekend backs up what the public is feeling.
When asked which crimes they believe are out of control, 74 per cent said knife crime, 70 per cent said theft, and 69 per cent pointed to drug-related crime.
So who’s right, the instincts of the British public, or the outdated traditional methods used to calculate crime?
I’m pretty certain the public have it right. The current measure is not just outdated, it’s becoming irrelevant.
GB NEWS
|'I’m pretty certain the public have it right. The current measure is not just outdated, it’s becoming irrelevant'
Even police-recorded crime is likely a huge underestimate. Why?
Because many of us no longer bother reporting crimes at all.
Often, we worry about the impact on our household insurance premiums, for example.