Recording petty disputes as crime is warping crime statistics and unnecessarily scaring the public, one of the nation’s most senior police chiefs has said. Sir David Thompson, chief constable of the West Midlands, said petty disputes and incivility are being taken down as criminal acts following a Home Office edict that all complaints from the public must be included in official figures.
In an interview with The Times, Sir David described the process as “completely mad”, adding it was only serving to distort the public’s view. He said: “We are recording colossal amounts of stuff in this violence category that makes the public think violence is going through the roof. But their actual experience of violence is going down.
“Over the last couple of years, for the first time in history, the police recorded more crime and violence than the public say is happening in the official crime survey. They’re inverted and it’s not right. We like to tell people to be polite and civil, but our job is about crime. Where somebody might wave a stick at you or come around and be rude about your children, that’s incivility.
“It shouldn’t be crime, but it’s getting really close to how we’re recording it.”
Sir David’s comments come after new figures from the Office for National Statistics showed a total of 6.5 million crimes were recorded in the 12 months to June 2022, up from the previous all-time high of 6.3 million in the year to March.
The figure is also up 12% compared with the year to June 2021, when crime levels were affected by Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.
