HOW RELIABLE ARE HERTFORDSHIRE'S CRIME STATISTICS? (St Albans Liberal Democrats)

St Albans Liberal Democrats <info@stalbanslibdems.org.uk>

HOW RELIABLE ARE HERTFORDSHIRE'S CRIME STATISTICS?

January 22, 2009 10:30 AM

Local Liberal Democrat parliamentary campaigner Sandy Walkington has expressed his concern that Hertfordshire Constabulary has been revealed as one of the 18 police forces in the country which have been under-reporting the incidence of serious violent crime. Although the Government became aware of the problem last October, they have only just been forced to release the full list of police forces involved.

"We will now need some clarity from the Government and the Hertfordshire police service on the actual incidence of serious violent crime in the county. Presumably all the recent figures will need to be rechecked to see where incidents were wrongly classified. I am not even sure it is the police who are directly to blame. The story seems to be that the Government issued so many 'guidance notes' on how to record crimes that a downward bias has crept in to these particular statistics. The public is particularly concerned about violent crime, so of course it suited the politicians to show a lower incidence and claim success for their policies.

"Now the Government admits it does not even know how long the under-reporting has been going on. It is not the first time that New Labour has been caught out fiddling with official statistics. But it is so damaging to public confidence.

"By and large Hertfordshire Constabulary is a highly rated police force, we are in no way a crime hot spot, but sometimes the local figures quoted about reducing crime in the county have seemed at odds with the experience on the ground," Sandy said. "I know from my own conversations with local residents backed up by a major crime survey conducted by Liberal Democrats across much of the St Albans constituency that local people are anxious about crime and disorder. Now we suddenly learn that nationwide serious violent crime is actually 22 percent higher year on year rather than lower as previously communicated. I do not know if this is reflected in Hertfordshire's local figures but we need to know. We have to be able to trust local crime statistics. The absolute and unquestioned reliability of government figures has to be one of the cornerstones of democracy - and yet again we have been let down," Sandy said.