Welcome To North Yorkshire, The Safest County In England

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Or something like that.

The incumbent Police and Crime Commissioner, Ms Julia Mulligan has made great play on Facebook about the latest set of Crime Stats from the Office of National Statistics showing that North Yorkshire has the lowest crime rate in England.

Well, I never could resist a challenge, I have been known to mull over dry old figures once or twice before, so how does her claim stack up?

She begins her Facebook post like this

Official figures showing North Yorkshire has the LOWEST crime rate in England demonstrate my record of delivery as Police & Crime Commissioner.

One of her claims is true, crime in North Yorkshire has only risen by 5% compared to 8% nationally.  Crime is UP?  Surely some mistake there?  I presume Reform is working.

Most of the credit can be attributed to a decrease in Theft (down 1%), Theft From Person (down 9%), Other Theft (down 8%), Drugs (down 7%) and Possession of Weapons (down 22%).  The last two can presumably be explained by the lower number of officers on the streets and the Home Secretary’s desired practice of reducing Stop and Search, so less opportunity to find these items.

The other side of the coin is not so rosy it would seem.

Violence Against The Person (UP 22%), Violence With Injury (UP 16%), Violence Without Injury (UP 31%), Sexual Offences (UP 18%), Robbery (UP 24% against a national DECREASE of 2%), Domestic Burglary (UP 4% against a national decrease of 3%), Non Domestic Burglary (UP 4% against a national decrease of 4%).  These are not my categories but the ones quoted by ONS.

So, Ms Mulligan, returning to your Facebook post you seem to be quite happy to take the credit for North Yorkshire having the lowest crime rate in England( 45.1 crimes per 1,000 of the population)

………demonstrate my record of delivery as Police & Crime Commissioner.

My plan for the future will build on this success – that’s why I’m asking you to make me your FIRST Choice for PCC on May 5th.

so I presume you will be equally happy to take the credit for all those offences which are UP.  Violence, Sexual Offences, Robbery, Burglary all UP.  This is the success you will be building on.

No Crime is a good thing but as you know Crime is categorised Minor and Major.  Virtually all of the crimes that are UP are in the Major Category.  I’m guessing that’s not actually a good thing.

Sadly the only conclusion that I can come to is that this is Party Political Spin.  Mrs May and her office keep telling us that Crime is Down, Reform is Working.  Well, even the lauded ONS statistics show us that All Crime (excluding Fraud) is up by 8% year on year.

Could candidates please abstain from spin and just give us the TRUTH, all of it, not just some of it?

I thank you

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6 thoughts on “Welcome To North Yorkshire, The Safest County In England”

  1. Gordon Williamson

    It’s not just over optimism by PCC North York’s it’s deliberately manipulating what and how they report the crime information to mislead the public. It’s rather cynical and dishonest in my view. It’s what we have all come to expect from our Politians but it’s not what I expect from the Police or rather the PCC’s. But it was inevitable when so many are politically affiliated that they would put a political spin on things. All the more reason to keep politics out of policing, it being inherently dishonest and all the more reason for independence in our PCC’s and Police.

  2. And we all know our rural communities have lost confidence in our police ? So, this won’t show the ‘under reporting’ of crime which is a huge concern of mine. Well put together piece.

    1. Thank you Mike. Anyone who regards those figures as a success is too easily pleased, concentrating on the minor successes and ignoring the failures

  3. I think one of the other factors not often mentioned as difficult to quantify is that many victims no longer report crime for a variety of reasons.

    1. I think you’re right but at the risk of sounding facetious it isn’t easy to quantify unreported crime. The Crime Survey of England and Wales measures crime differently and makes the crime rate even higher

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