Crime is a subject of real concern in Stoke Newington. N16 asked John Lea, a criminologist and regular visitor to Church Street, to comment on the statistics recently issued by Hackney Council through the Stoke Newington Forum.

Crime statistics are a notoriously unreliable indicator of what is actually happening in the real world. They are usually based on the number of incidents reported to the police. An apparent rise in crime may, therefore, indicate simply that victims are more willing to phone the police, or that police are arresting more people, rather than any real changes in the rate of offending.

For some offences, such as burglary and theft, your bank or insurance company will insist you report to the police. The reporting of other offences, such as violence, sexual assault or drugs, will depend very much on factors such as fear of reprisals from the attacker and what sort of treatment victims think they will get from the police if they do make a report.

That said, the detailed local crime statistics for Stoke Newington provided in the recent minutes of the Stoke Newington Forum are good to have. They do give us some indication of what is happening in our area and to what extent it is typical of the London Borough of Hackney as a whole or London more generally.

?????? of crime reported to the police, make comparisons for the financial years April 2003/March 2004 and April 2002/March 2003. The table below contains a brief summary of some of the information.

The crime scene in Stoke Newington differs from that of the London Borough of Hackney as a whole. Overall crime reported to the police in Hackney went up over the period by 10.7 percent but only by 7.6 percent in Stoke Newington. Street crime (which includes robbery of personal property and snatch theft) increased by 13.5 percent but in Stoke Newington it went down.

Nevertheless, Stoke Newington has the second highest reported street crime allegations of the four wards of the London Borough of Hackney (Hackney, NE Stamford Hill, Shoreditch and Stoke Newington). This, according to the report, is due to high rates in the Dalston area. Likewise, reported residential burglary in Stoke Newington has fallen, whereas for Hackney as a whole there was a 7.7 percent increase. But again, Stoke Newington still has the highest number of allegations for any of the four wards of the Borough. The report says Brownswood ward is a hot spot.

Meanwhile, reports of drugs possession increased by 49 percent in Stoke Newington while the figure for the London Borough of Hackney as a whole was 54 percent. This rise is despite 'successful' police operations closing down 120 crack houses in Hackney. It should also be noted, however, that although the percentage increase is large, the actual number of such reported incidents (617) is quite low compared to crimes such as car crime (theft of and from motor vehicles) or residential burglary.

You don't need 'A' level maths to understand that, where there are a small number of actual incidents, a few more or less can result in large percentage changes either way. This is especially true when you come to the statistics on sexual offences. The actual number of reported incidents (93) is rather low, so a percentage decrease of 38.4 percent on the previous 12 months doesn't necessarily say a great deal.

Far more important would be some indication of what proportion of such incidents are actually being reported. Police have made some progress in recent years in their treatment of victims of sexual assault. So it might be assumed that a decrease represents a real trend rather than just a decline in reporting. But only a door-to-door interview survey can give us reliable information on this.

Figures for racial incidents were not available for the last financial year, so no estimates of changes can be made. There were 113 racial incidents reported in Stoke Newington during April 2002/March 2003 and 477 for Hackney as a whole. One wonders if the absence of any figures for 2003/2004 is simply bureaucratic oversight?

Finally, violence against the person (which includes actual and grievous bodily harm, common assault, child neglect and various Crime in Stoke Newington other categories) is probably the issue that concerns people most. The 13 percent increase over the 12 months to March 2003 was broadly in line with that of the Borough as a whole, and the numbers of incidents are quite significant. Stoke Newington has a population of 54,000 so the rate works out as 29 reported violent incidents for every 1,000 members of the population. This is in line with the rate for Greater London as a whole (25 incidents per 1,000 of the population). Also the rate of increase reflects wider trends. The most recent crime statistics for England and Wales last July showed a 12 percent rise in crimes of violence, close to the figures for both Stoke Newington and Hackney as a whole. If these figures are accurate, then they show a reversal of earlier trends. According to the Hackney Crime and Disorder Audit for 1999-2001 violence against the person fell during that period by 6 percent in Hackney as a whole.