Is the crime has doubled since labor came to power?
According to the statistics, the United Kingdom is the violent crime capital of Europe and has one of the highest rates of violence in the world.
We all know that the general election of 2010 has been held on 6 May, So the government was under pressure these days and the people and competitors mainly conservative party were talking about country problems, People, Tax and so on and so forth, but among these subjects there is an interesting subject what I liked to search and discuss about it. And that’s violence and crimes.
More or less we all know that the United Kingdom always had problem with violent and crimes and now competitors used this against labor party. They mentioned that according to the statistics the crimes increased since labor came to power and the labor party says that they had deduction of crimes during these years.
Now I am trying to find evidence to prove that who is telling the truth, I will discuss based on government statistics, I have to say maybe it`s not reliable completely but there is no other choice except to trust them.
Labor Background
The labor party founded on 1900, and first won the election during the early 1920`s, After Ramsay McDonald, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Tony Blair now Prime minister Gordon Brown is the current party`s leader. I will discuss about new labor party they were in government since 1997 until now.
The conservative was the main party against labor, and they tried to prove that the crime has doubled during 13 years of labor work they both shows the different statistics against each other conservative tried to hit labor and they mutually have defended.
Conservative Statements
Conservative party started with a question that: What has labor done?
Since 1997 the government tried to implement the rules and regulation to reduce the violent and crimes.The actions are as follows:
· More strict about illegal firearms
· Recruiting more police
· 5 years jail for gun and ban for carrying
· Monitoring pedophiles
There more actions and campaigns but nothing special it didn’t even work!
The conservative believed that government failed in implementing rules and regulations so they said these actions may help crimes to slopping downward but trend was still upward, and sometimes it caused more crimes.
The evidence
The conservative believed that the crimes increased since 1997 and they mentioned that according to the Home Office statistics thefts from shops are now in the highest level. And they published follow statistic: (Table 2.04)
http://www.philipdunne.com/retailcrimecommission/Retail_Crime_Commission.pdf
As you can see in the above curve, the number of offences increased since 1997 obviously and there is upward slopping till 2009. It’s really interesting to keep this curve in your mind because it would be different from labor statistic.
They also mentioned what was the problem in this case:
· Lack of strategy
Maybe they wanted to implement useful actions but they didn’t have good strategy.
· Lack of sharing information
They didn’t have any idea that what would be the reason of increasing the crimes and where is the problem.
· Ineffective sanctions
Labor defense
The labor party also tried to defend from what they have done, and they said: it’s completely wrong that violent crimes are raised under labor and they believed that it’s not true under British crime survey neither under recorded crimes.
The evidence
BCS Survey (British Crime Survey) is based on interview from 40,000 people a year about their experience of crime shows that violent crime was down by 49% since 1995. And also the Cardiff University hospital shows a downward trend with a 15% fall in the number of people treated for wounds.They also published the statistic:
http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs09/hosb1109vol1.pdf
The labor also used to say as Home Office word just like conservative but they have different data and statistics like this bar chart that again shows that crime was than except 7% increase in theft from the person which as you can see is not statistically significant.
Labor said that the conservative have showed a big increase in violent crime and they don’t accept BCS survey, so they have used recorded crime figures. But the problem is that there have been several changes to the recording methodology since labor was in government. And the important case that labor party mentioned was that they have used various ways of measuring. They said that what the conservative didn`t mentioned was that researchers only looked at the effect of one year not on the number of crimes recorded.
Conclusion
The conservative party tried to show something else by playing with statistics. This is not even mentioned by Home Office. The result of way that they measured the numbers was different figures and it was kind of tricky.
They both relied on crime statistics which are not reliable because in this case the government would never publish true numbers.It is hard to believe them but at least the labor party published what home office had published.
There are evidence that improve that government did something and they tried to solve the problems maybe it didn`t work but no one can ask what they have done.It`s very unfair question because sometimes we need to ask ourselves that if I were him what would I do? It is difficult for both sides. People see the crimes and they are worry and sad and they expect someone to do something the other side the government worries about more crimes and also more limitations.
References
• Retail crime commission. Report to the conservative party. (Based on home office reports)
• Alan Travis Tuesday 27 April 2010 11.50 BST guardian.co.uk
• http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/
• http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs09/hosb1109vol1.pdf
• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223193/Culture-violence-Gun-crime-goes-89-decade.html
• Recorded Crime Statistics England and Wales, April 1999 to March 2000 By David Povey, Judith Cotton and Suzannah Sisson
• A Century of Change: Trends in UK statistics since 1900 By Joe Hicks & Grahame Allen, 21 December 1999.
• http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/crime/
Good.
ReplyDeleteWhy is the first part all in capitals?
Some assertions in the first part need more support.
History of labour unnecessary.
Something's wrong with the secion on evidence.
Don't just give links to graphs.
Conclusion is unclear.