First catch the criminals
The debate about this year's crime statistics is, as usual, dogged by quarrels about how crime should be measured. If, like the Home Secretary, you choose to focus on the British Crime Survey - an opinion poll of 40,000 people - you may be heartened to learn that there has been a small drop of two per cent in crime figures overall and stable levels of violent crime.
However, those who accept the Home Office's own figures for the last year - that is, for all reported crime - will have a less sanguine view. According to these, the most serious violent crimes have increased by nearly a fifth. Even more alarmingly, the number of women reporting rape has increased by 27 per cent. Scotland Yard has also reported an 11 per cent rise in the number of women raped and sexually assaulted in the capital's bars and clubs.
And Londoners overall have a one in ten chance of becoming a victim of crime. The Home Office figures are worrying, because serious violent crime is the kind that is most likely to be reported to the police, unlike more trivial offences.
The rise of nearly a fifth, therefore, is alarming. Some of the underlying social causes - like family breakdown - are outside the power of the police, but in other cities, violent crime has been susceptible to good policing. Of course, this is not the whole story.
Street robberies, for instance, decreased last year. This is only partly because of technological developments - stolen mobile phones, for example, can now be more easily disabled. It is also because of a renewed intelligence-centred focus by the police which has yielded real results.
But the Home Office's own figures show that directing more resources to the police is not enough on its own. The sobering reality is that the increase in violent crime has happened at the same time as police numbers have risen to record levels. The criminal justice system is also crucial to public confidence. Some of the measures in Mr Blunkett's Criminal Justice Bill, which will return to the Commons in September, will improve the effectiveness of the system, for instance, in dealing with the problem of jury intimidation. But even the best-performing justice system can only deal with those offenders who are brought to justice.
The real scandal of the crime figures is that the Metropolitan Police has a detection rate of only 14 per cent, the lowest in the country. If we are to deal effectively with crime, let's first catch the criminals.
