| . |
p4
LOCAL CRIME FACTS
· There are 692 police officers in Hackney. About 220
are constables in patrol cars, 150 work in the various sectors on all crimes, 100 are
supervisors and about 100 are in plain clothes. Intelligence, specialist units and senior
officers make up the remainder. The annual budget is £30 million, of which about £1
million is spent on police overtime.
· There were 550 street crimes committed in Stoke Newington in 2000/01,
an increase of 2 per cent over the previous year. This is 16 incidents per 1000 of the
population. Since these figures were published, the police say that the number of street
crimes in the whole of Hackney has risen by up to 40 per cent.
· There were 969 assaults in 2000/01 (murder, GBH, ABH and common
assault) in Stoke Newington: down 3.5 per cent and with 29 incidents per 1000 of the
population.
· In Hackney, in the ten months from April 2001 to January 2002, there were 1085
snatch offences of which 742 involved mobiles and 2372 robberies of which 1118
involved mobiles.
· Males aged between 16 and 25 commit 66 per cent of street crime in
Hackney.
· Nearly 5 per cent of all households in Stoke Newington were burgled in
2000/01.
· The main 'hotspots' for all crimes in Stoke Newington are around the
High Street, Church Street, Rectory ward and the centre of Stamford Hill.
· Useful tip: to find your mobile's IMEI serial number, to report if
stolen, press * # 0 6 # ('star' 'hash' 'zero' 'six' 'hash').
· Hackney Safer Communities would like to hear residents' views. Contact
Jan Jenkins on e-mail jjenkins@gw.hackney.gov.uk phone: 020 8356 2051.
'The question of race should not be a major factor in the consideration of local crime'
|
nationalities. If, for instance, the Turkish government takes action
against the Kurds, this could have a knock-on effect on those living here.
Finally, the question of drugs. Why are there so many crack houses that are reported but
not closed down? Because, he says, it's not so simple. A search warrant is needed, it
requires a whole squad, not just a single officer, and the Council have to evict the
(often legal) resident and board the place up. In any case, the operation will just move
elsewhere. So, what's his attitude towards soft drugs? 'Use discretion' is his motto and
that's what he's told his officers. 'Where's the logic of us spending two or three hours
dealing with a spliff?' he asks.
Peter Robbins is not a supporter of 'zero tolerance'. In his view, apart from the drain on
police resources of having to sweep up every small technical offence, it would need a vast
expansion of the court system, prisons and social services. He believes in the
'partnership' approach between police and the other services in the borough to deal with
the root causes of crime. This is called the Hackney Safer Communities Partnership.
However, he admits it's a hard slog as everyone has their own list of priorities.
Subsequent to our meeting, an official report was published which showed that the Lambeth
experiment appeared to be successful. By not arresting people in possession of cannabis,
valuable police time had been released and more hard drugs were seized. We asked Hackney's
new Borough Commander, Chief Superintendent Derek Benson, if this had lessons for Hackney.
He replied: 'I look forward to reading the full evaluation. Targeting of those who supply
and use drugs such as crack cocaine will warrant a higher priority than those who supply
and use cannabis.' However, he then went on to say, 'This does not mean that we will
ignore cannabis. Whilst many who use cannabis do not move on to drugs such as crack,
research has shown that the majority who do use Class A drugs started on cannabis. I
believe this puts the debate in perspective.' Reading between the lines, this does not
sound like a ringing endorsement of a new local approach to soft drugs.
Professor Jock Young is Head of the Centre of Criminology at Middlesex
University and author of New Criminology, a standard textbook on the subject. He lives
with his partner and children in Stoke Newington. He is forthright. Crime in the
industrialised world, except for Russia, is declining. In the UK, the police caseload
dropped by 19 per cent between 1990 and 2000 and there has been no significant increase
since. Police numbers have decreased nationally by only 3000, or 2.5 per cent, during that
period. Their civilian back up has increased. Street robbery is only 1.7 per cent of total
crime figures.
He regards the demands for more police officers as unjustified special pleading and says
that the most useful indicator of police efficiency is crimes cleared up per police
officer per year. This has fallen from about twelve crimes per officer per year in 1990 to
about ten crimes per officer per year today. It is even lower in the Metropolitan area.
What is needed is improved police efficiency, not greater police numbers. He also says
that, in relation to crack dens, which cause real neighbourhood distress, it is not
logical merely to say that they will move on. They should be chased continually so as to
disrupt their market and sales.
 Jock Young says that crime is not a question of race
but of class. Young males from poorer backgrounds largely carry out street crime. If there
are more black suspects than white in Stoke Newington, it's because they constitute a
segment of the local population that tends to be poor rather than inherently criminal. He
says that if a similar sample were undertaken in Glasgow, it could well be found that most
street robberies were perpetrated by white male Catholics who come from the deprived areas
of the city. Ethnicity is not a reliable signpost to the causes of crime.
So what can we conclude? The most obvious is that people's fear of crime is not matched by
the actual amount of crime. This is not surprising given the headlines and recent reports
of an armed robbery at the Church Street Post Office, organised thieving at Junk and
Disorderly and a Church Street Newsagent assaulted by a schoolboy. |
. |
