The Tories cannot level-up the country without tackling crime as poorer communities are being hit hardest, Shadow Policing Minister Sarah Jones has warned.
In an exclusive interview with the Mirror, the Labour frontbencher tore into Home Secretary Priti Patel for ripping the "the heart out of policing" as damning new stats showed police solved just over 5% of burglaries last year and anti-social behaviour runs riot.
It comes as Communities Secretary Michael Gove prepares to publish the Government's Levelling Up White Paper, which is designed to improve people's lives and life chances in Red Wall communities and beyond.
But Ms Jones said: "You can't level up without cutting crime.
"You're seven times more likely to be a victim of homicide if you live in the poorest 10% of the community than if you live in the richest 10% and you are five times more likely to be admitted to hospital with a knife offence, and in terms of antisocial behaviour, it's often so ignored by this Government.
"They see anti-social behaviour as low level crime, and a catch-all term for a lot of different things. And what you'll see is more deprived areas suffering more in terms of street crime, violent crime and different types of crime.
"There's a definite inequality. And if this government is serious about tackling levelling up, they need to tackle crime."
It came as official data showed anti-social behaviour was at its highest level in seven years and that cops cracked just over 5% of burglaries last year compared with nearly 9.4% in 2015.
The mother-of-four also disclosed how being targeted by criminals in the past herself left her and her family feeling "vulnerable" and "scared".
She recalled death threats sent to the Croydon MP's family in recent years. Her family home has been burgled twice, with the criminal breaking down the door and taking laptops, valuables and her son's Playstation while they were out.
Ms Jones said as a result she understands what being targeted by criminals feels like and how she tried to shield her children from the "very intrusive" incidents.
"It was scary," she said of the burglaries. "And you have to explain to your children who might have done these things. You try and talk it down and say that it was maybe somebody with lots of problems.
"You do try and protect your child from the fear as much as possible."
She said that while people have threatened to "murder my children", she feels "lucky" in comparison to some other MPs, including tragic David Amess and Jo Cox, and others who face violence and much higher levels of threats.
"I don't get anywhere near the quantity of threats that other MPs, like Diane Abbott or Jess Phillips, where they have a revolving door of people going in and out of prison for threats against them, she said. "But it's obviously not pleasant."
Ms Jones also remembered her first grim experience with crime was being groped by a man on public transport when she was a teenager.
She said: "I was attacked several times just as a woman travelling... I was groped on the Tube quite aggressively.
"It was when I was in sixth form. I went to a lecture in London and I was groped by a man just in a very crowded tube. I did think about reporting that and I did say somebody or that man just grabbed me, so I did say something to somebody but then it just sort of drifted away.
"These are the kind of things that women never reported. I remember being in a taxi and the taxi driver saying, 'I think maybe I'm not going to take you home' and being terrified that he wouldn't take me home.
"So, yeah, I know what crime feels like. It feels horrible. And that's why I know people want to be safe and they want to be able to walk on the streets without feeling scared."
'Why I joined the Labour Party'
Shadow policing minister Sarah Jones resolved to join the Labour Party when Tory Peter Lilley berated single mums as "benefit offenders" during his notorious "something for nothing society" speech.
The Croydon MP was pregnant with her first child in 1992 and in the first year of a history degree at Durham University when she heard the then Social Security Secretary declare he would "close down the 'something for nothing' society".
Holding aloft a piece of paper he claimed it was "a little list" of claimants he said he would "soon be rooting out and who never would be missed", while rhyming to the tune of comic opera The Mikado.
On the list, he said, were "young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing queue". Ms Jones, a mum-of-four who took a year out of university to raise her son but later returned to complete her degree, was furious.
She told the Mirror: "It was like a list of people we wanted to get rid of and it was the time when everybody hated asylum seekers and teenage moms.
"They were the two groups of people everybody was blaming for everything. "And that made me very angry. And I thought, you know, I've got something to contribute. "I'm not a burden to society. Just because I needed help doesn't now doesn't mean I haven't got something to offer."
