North MSP cautions over fall in reported crime

Highlands & Islands (Labour) MSP, David Stewart, has welcomed the further reduction in reported crime, but warns that people should not be fooled by a headline and the full picture needs to be looked at.

“ I welcome the drop in reported crime, which is in fact a trend across the UK” said David Stewart. “Credit must go to our front line Police Officers who do their best in sometimes difficult circumstances and also to the public who appear to be more security conscious. Studies have shown that it appears less younger people are turning to crime also, whilst our restorative Justice System has also had an impact”.

“However, the  actual  number  of crimes  being cleared-up in  Scotland fell from198,985 in  2006/07 to 139,306  in  2013/14. This means that reported crime is falling, but the clear up rate, the number of detections, are not following this trend with detections overall rising from 47% to 51% and this despite having 1000 extra ‘bobbies on the beat’.

“Yet the SNP claim the reduction is as a direct result of the extra 1000 bobbies they have recruited “ said David Stewart. “This is just to simplistic an explanation. There are 17,234 Police Officers now on the pay roll of Police Scotland, but the key question should be how are they being deployed? There are less Support Staff and we know for a fact that front line bobbies are doing back office jobs, so there are in fact less of them on the streets. If crime is falling so fast and we have an extra 1000 Police Officers as the SNP repeatedly claim, then with less reported crime and more Police Officers, should we not have more and more crimes being detected?”

David Stewart continued “A report by Reform Scotland, published during June of this year, revealed that almost 60,000 fewer crimes were solved in 2013/14 than 2006/07.This is despite 1,000 extra police officers being hired and a 35% fall in the crime rate over that particular period.130,000 crimes were unsolved in 2013/14 and the number of crimes cleared up went down from 12 per officer in 2006/07 to 8 per officer in 2013/14 according to this report.”

“ My call today is to welcome the reduction in reported crime, but I caution that we should not kid ourselves about the overall picture, as we have work to do in relation to detected crime and that has nothing to do with the capabilities of our Police Officers, but everything to do with how they are deployed. We need to get back to the scenario of local Officers, dealing with local issues and accountable locally ”.

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