I suspect it will come to no surprise to most sensible people – only to those who actually believe anything they read in the Daily Mail – but “knife crime”, the current source of tabloid panic in Britain, is no worse than it was ten years ago. Polly Tonybee writes in the Guardian:
In 1995 there were 243 murders with sharp instruments; 10 years later there were slightly fewer, at 236 last year. Over the decade the average weekly number of knife murders has been four and a half – and recently, during this panic, there have been no more than four knife murders a week.
And she’s obtained some interesting figures on the effects of a variety of anti-crime measures:
Unpublished Home Office research assessing the cost-effectiveness of ways to reduce crime has produced astonishing results. Estimating crimes reduced per £1,000 spent, they find (depressingly) that current drug treatment cuts only 1.3 crimes. (There are very few residential drug-treatment places, when addicts need Priory-type intensive help.) Hot-spot policing cuts 1.9 crimes. Reoffending-reduction schemes in prison cut 2.3 crimes. But parenting programmes cut 11 crimes. And Youth Inclusion and Support Panels cut 15 crimes per £1,000 spent. In these a panel of all the local services takes eight- to 13-year-olds at highest risk and gives them intensive support before it’s too late – treating 36,000 of the most precarious children, with these good results.
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