Tough on crime…
Crime and public opinion — what’s changed and what hasn’t
I thought about crime last week. First, I saw reference to “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” when flicking through Labour’s draft policy platform for 2024. And then in a TV piece on Boris Johnson’s travails, I saw footage from his participation in a dawn raid on county lines gangs in Liverpool.
In his autobiography, Tony Blair credits Gordon Brown’s “genius” for “tough on…” which was borne of a recognition that “Labour people” were anxious about law and order including “low level” anti-social behaviour. He wanted to cut through left and right stances and solutions for crime, creating a new way of tackling the problem.
At the time that Blair was Shadow Home Secretary, Ipsos would regularly see between 20% and 30% of Britons identifying crime as among the most important issues facing the country and the issue averaged 27% during his time as PM. But when Boris Johnson was putting on his stab-proof vest in late 2021, it was just 6%.
It’s still 6%, but that’s not really the point. While the Crime Survey of England and Wales recorded significant falls in crime between 1995 and the start of the pandemic, public perceptions of criminal behaviour remained consistently high. During this period, a far higher proportion of people reported experiencing no crime than felt safe from crime.
Last summer, crime hit a 20-year high. Murders committed using a knife or sharp instrument rose 19% in the year to March 2022. Statistics are often contested but what isn’t is media’s tendency to “serve up plenty of negative information for us to overly focus on” as Bobby Duffy put it in The Perils of Perception. Headlines highlight spikes in the prevalence of particular crimes as this is more newsworthy than a gradual decline overall.
Crime is much more salient locally and is more of a concern for some communities. When Ipsos polled people in advance of May’s local elections about what was shaping the way they would vote, they found people identifying national issues — the cost of living and NHS as the most important — followed by the condition of streets, roads and pavements and crime and policing as the most influential local issues. However, those aged 55–75 rated crime and policing on an equal footing to the cost of living or the NHS.
This means politicians need to be animated and active on crime. Johnson was in Liverpool to promote the government’s new 10-year strategy for clamping down on gangs and other drug-related crime. Keir Starmer has made ‘making streets safe’ as one of his five missions. Rishi Sunak chose immigration instead of crime as one of his five “immediate priorities” but as recently as March announced a crackdown on anti-social behaviour. This included proposals for “immediate justice” with vandals dressed in high-vis garb being completed to repair the damage they have done.
This is likely to play well. Britons tend to prefer parties who say the criminal justice system is too soft and more prisons are needed rather than those that argue for more alternatives to prison sentences such as community service and fines (by 40% to 27%).
While crime was rising last year, the proportion of offences leading to court action fell to a new low. Just as people lament NHS waiting times and backlogs, they doubt the responsiveness of an over-stretched police force diverted to tackling new types of crime. There are also trust issues. Last year, Ipsos found only one in four would speak highly of their local police and concern about policing was highest in London with the Met embroiled in a series of scandals.
Another study by Ipsos, conducted this year, found confidence in law enforcement to stop crime and arrest the right perpetrators to be lower in Britain than the 29-country average across a range of metrics. For example, Britain ranks second to last among all 29 countries surveyed, with only 31% confident that law enforcement can stop non-violent crime.
But there are more immediate priorities for Britons. They would prefer the government to prioritise creating jobs and boosting the economy (55%) or protecting local citizens’ health and the environment (31%) rather than stopping or reducing crime (14%). Being tough on “causes” as well as “crime” looks just as relevant today.
