As we all know, crime has devastating outcomes to our social life and the economy of countries. However, how is the crime rate in UK during these years? Some people might say it has decreased in recent year due to the restored economy after the financial crisis in 2008. Unfortunately, according to the data collected by ONS (2016), The Guardian (2017) shows that crime rise is biggest in a decade. From my point of view, crime rate has risen due to various reasons. For instance, economic factors like Brexit, or inequality problems. In this essay, I am going to illustrate the main causes of changing crime rates in some of specific offenses.
That comes out a question: Do crime rate increase or decrease during these years? Can we trust the data online? It is a controversial that need us to think twice. According to The Conversation (2017), Hamilton states that crime rate has riesen 10% overall in 12 months to March 2017 which the data was recorded by police. The ONS figures (2017) do show some alarming rises. For example, the violent crime surged 18% during the 12 months. The rate of homicide jumped 26% and robberies has increase 16%. However, in the same report published, there are some conflicting evidences. Firstly, by analyzing the data from a line graph, it shows that after 2008, the amount of crime is going to a decrease. But data recorded by police, the number of offenses is rising from 2010 to 2017.
Another news from BBC (5 May 2017), the Brexit secretary David Davis claimed that after Theresa May elected as the prime minister. The crime rate went down 30% over 6 years. In contrast, Ms. Long-Bailey, shadow business secretary, said that violence offenses have surged 19%. In my opinion, I think crime rate has risen in UK these years mostly due to the Brexit. Brexit has significant impact on people’s life. The exchange rate of pounds has gone down and it creates lots of crisis like terrorism attack in central London. As for the society today, most of the employees are working in a tight and fast pace. This only can bring them with stress and anxiety. In this case, people are more likely to commit their stress to satisfy themselves and release the unhappiness.
So, who is right for the results? It is difficult to distinguish who is correct or wrong because we get two method of crime statistics. One is from the data recorded by police the other is crime survey and they count different crimes. The Crime Survey usually includes crime record which the police do not and vise versa. Crime survey do not count a lot of serious offenses such as homicide, weapon attacks and sexual offenses. Another reason why this happen is because the under-recorded crime. According to BBC news (2017), some people might judge that the recent rise of crime is due to the ongoing improvement of crime recording. Nevertheless, it has some limitations, the data conducted by the crime survey does not include crimes against business or people living in the communal house. They also do not cover the offenses which do not have victims or interviews. For instance, murder or drug crimes.
There are some specific crimes which have increased during these years. The Mirror (2018) said the crime police recorded showed a massive increase of 14% in 2017. A dramatic data is that there is a leap to number of crime until September 2017 which is 5.3 million offenses. It was driven partly by an increase in knife crime and gun crime. Moreover, there is a big change in stalking and harassment offenses. It went up by 36% to 262,459. What’s more, rape went up 29% to 48,773.
The main reason why more and more violent crimes are happened is all about the policies in UK. The rehabilitation, environment of prison as well as the whole society. Firstly, the unfair treating may cause crimes happened, a people who is discriminated by other might cause angry and this can be the source of crime committing. Secondly, jail and prison usually make worse criminals due to the wrong correction. The declassification of criminal is also the cause of crime creation. Furthermore, one interesting point is that air pollution can be linked with the increase of crime rates. According to Independent (February 2018), Julia claimed that air pollution not only corrupt people’s health but also affect their behavior. With people living in a polluted area, it seems that people are more concerned about safety and there are more antisocial crimes. Lastly, according to the data collected by ONS (2017), the police number has decreased by 10% comparing with the past. Government say this change are made because we get a better living standard and the public order has improved. So it should be less crimes would be committed. However, this can be the significant reason of increasing crime rate. Criminals may tend to against the law because they think nobody is going to control them and they get more chance to commit crimes.
In contrast, there are some crimes which the number has dropped down recent years. According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales, there is a 7% decrease in crime rates and the diagram shows a downward trend of crime numbers recorded by police and crime survey. A study from LSE found that property crimes fell by around 40 to 50% between 1990s and late 2000s. Moreover, there is a research which people are asked to talk about their feeling of nowadays safety questions. Most of the people said they feel no more crimes nowadays especially for theft and rape.
There are several reasons for the dropping rates of specific crimes. Firstly, the economic condition of UK has restored and become better after the financial crisis in 2008. Secondly, government spent more money and focused on improving education and wages for labors which have indirect effects on crime reduction. Moreover, policies of minimum wages are well implemented and improve people’s living standard. In this case, people are feeling happy and less stressful so that there are less crimes happened in the society.
In conclusion, there are changes every day in the world which we cannot predict. As I mentioned before, crime rates for violent crime such as knife crime and gun offense has increased comparing with the rate for property crime, theft and robbery which has fallen down. There are various causes for that in case of political, economic or even mental things. However, the whole UK is getting better and people have a higher standard of living compared with the past. Government and every citizen still need to do lots of things to make our countries better.
