21
Aug
2013
By Calvin at 10:54 GMT, 12 years ago
Have you seen this article in the Mail online?
This is the full headline:
Astonishing means ‘surprised’ or ‘impressed’ and I’m neither surprised nor impressed by this latest breakdown of publically available crime data. Actually I’m rather fed up about it and feel sorry for the people and businesses associated with the streets and locations that have been identified as being ‘lawless’; a word which means a place not governed by or obedient to laws and characterized by a lack of civic order and a word deliberately chosen by the Mail online to bolster their headline.
Why am I not surprised? It is pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that if you go to a place that is teeming with people there are bound to be more crimes. This is because the opportunities for things like shoplifting, pick-pocketing, robbery and thieving in general in a crowded shopping centre are obviously greater than in my local shopping parade. And when you drill down on the figures and make allowances for the number of potential people who could be targets you’ll probably see that the ‘risks’ of becoming a victim are not much greater (if at all) than if you visited the Co-op just down the road from me.
And even the smaller street location figures don’t really tell us a great deal. Take this scenario: A burglar has a set of bump keys and finds that all the front doors on a particular new housing development use the same make of cylinder. In a week he commits a dozen burglaries by simply letting himself in through the front doors. He then leaves the location and tries somewhere else, or gets caught. This consequently skews the normal background crime levels for the street and shows this particular postcode as one of the worst burgled places in the county for that year. (By the way, bumping doesn't happen that much and I've simply used it as an example of an MO that could be used with regularity. I could have chosen some terraced housing where the locked entrance gate leading to the back alley has a broken lock giving a window (or gate) of opportunity to the burglar)
When I studied criminology I remember being set an assignment to see how the media reports on crime. I remember buying all the newspapers one day and highlighting all the stories that related to crime. Although I wasn’t ‘astonished’ it was interesting to see that if you stripped the papers of their crime stories you could probably have reduced the paper by a third and saved a lot of paper and ink.
Newspapers thrive on crime stories, because they sell papers and unfortunately give the reading public a rather skewed impression of what’s really going on. And stating the ‘bleedin’ obvious’ never helps anyone. The local police know what their problems are and it’s quite clear from the article that they’re doing something about it.
But the worst part for me, living in West London, is the impression this article gives about my adopted city. You’ve only got to read the comment box below to see the sad reactions.
“Who'd live in London? What a dreadful quality of life”
“I was born and raised in London! I never, ever go to central London anymore ...it's the most dangerous place”
(This one made me smile) “And Luton is not on any of these lists? They can't be accurate then...” The contributor comes from Luton.
My wife and I and our friends visit central London and the Shepherd’s Bush Westfield shopping centre (2nd on the list) on a regular basis and we feel ‘as safe as houses’. But we do use our common sense. We don’t go walking around with wallets in the back pocket, handbags wide open. We don’t leave our mobiles on the table when we order a drink at the bar, we don’t leave stuff on view in our parked car, we don’t walk around with the latest smartphones glued to our ears and we have our wits about us and avoid people that look like trouble.
We know there are risks in life, but most crime can be avoided.
So don’t take too much notice of what you read in the press. They’re not crime experts; they simply report the stuff and unfortunately sometimes scare the living daylights out of people.
What is bumping? http://thecrimepreventionwebsite.com/improving-the-security-of-your-existing-doors/557/more-things-to-improve-door-security/
The Mail online article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2389085/Britains-crime-hotspots-Astonishing-new-figures-identify-lawless-postcodes-country--zero-Londons-Westfield-Shopping-centres.html
