Crime

Crime is another example of Being Bad. Although we are not covering it in the module it is certainly a topic worth discussing. At the beginning of the year 'there was an unexpected 8% drop in crime recorded by the police in the 12 months to September with falls in burglary, robbery and violence despite the recession', However, this does not consider unreported crimes such as rape, when the victim may be traumatised, cases of domestic abuse where the victim is afraid to report it or child abuse, when the victim does not have a voice and also white collar crime. The list could go on forever but the main idea is that the Police statistics for crimes are not very accurate.

Crime itself may be slightly on the decline but there is a long way to go until the crime rate drops considerably. More Officers on the streets and other methods the police are using do not necessarily help. The crime could move to a different area or just simply be committed indoors. One campaign that is successful or at least gets the message across are the Knife crime adverts that are currently on TV. I will post a link to one of them at the end of this blog. This data was only collected from people who have experienced crime, many people are reluctant to discuss their experiences for numerous reasons. An example of this was the issue with the Taxi drivers that received licences when they were previously convicted. In total 209 individuals were given licences and over the past three years '250 crimes have been carried out by licensed taxi drivers in the past three years, including rape and threats to murder.'

This blog could continue for pages and pages, however I believe that this is sufficient (lets hope the person who gives me my grade does too!!).

Articles used - http://www.crimestoppers-uk.org/media-centre/crime-in-the-news/january-2010--crime-in-the-news/criminals-granted-taxi-licences

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/21/police-figures-unexpected-drop-crime

Other links - http://www.crimestoppers-uk.org/crime-prevention/latest-crime-statistics

Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KfBn7RU8wo