Crime detection rates a ‘disgrace’, says Blunkett
Home Secretary David Blunkett has said that crime detection rates are ‘not good enough’.
Speaking to Newsnight on BBC last night he explained that although crime has fallen, the fear of crime remains high, and that the proportion of crimes being resolved is too low.
Fewer than a quarter of crimes lead to the perpetrator being bought to justice, and while he suggested that the fall in this proportion might be because the figures are more accurate than they were, he labelled them a ‘disgrace’.
Mr Blunkett also suggested that these figures may not fairly represent the successes that have been achieved, such as the 29,000 additional cases that got through the courts last year.
He remarked: “It is disgraceful that clear up rates have dropped since 1997. They are actually truer than they were ten, twenty or even five years ago in the sense that there is a greater honesty in the way in which the figures are complied now and that is true of recorded crime as well. But it is a disgrace”.
He also claimed that although prison populations are to rise in the short run due to new crime initiatives, long-term plans were to reduce prison populations by rehabilitating first time offenders.
‘I believe in the short term that the prison population will rise. We are planning on that and we have two new prisons at Ashford and Peterborough. We will raise the number we have already got in the pipeline to 79,000. But I want to start reversing that.’
‘I am interested in a radical, new, progressive approach but it has got to be based on getting tough when people breach sentences when they are causing havoc in the community and above all consistency of sentencing.’
