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'I've been stopped and searched 400 times'

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Young black men from London speak to BBC Newsnight about their experiences of stop and search.

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Lecture on falling crime in the UK

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Can we ever have a crime free world? - UCL Lunch Hour Lecture

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Corbyn and May debate crime statistics

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Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have clashed in the House of Commons for their weekly duel of Prime Minister's Questions.

The Prime Minister and Labour leader faced off over police funding as they each produced damning statistics proving their point.

Labour's leader said police-recorded crime had gone up. But Mrs May quoted the separate 'Crime Survey' which said it had gone down.

Confronted by Mr Corbyn, the PM claimed recorded crime was only soaring because police are now better at writing it down - thanks to her.

The pair also tried to 'out-suffragette' each other by citing their own parties' commitments to women's rights. Watch the full clash above or read our Head of Politics' verdict here.

Elsewhere in today's PMQs Mrs May sparked fury by refusing to guarantee she'd protect the NHS from US business in a post-Brexit trade deal.

And she suffered a torrent of new bad news about benefits.

One MP, Labour's Liz McInnes, told her a woman with a rare disease was refused disability benefit because she has a degree.

Another MP said Universal Credit claimants have to book a face to face appointment if they forget their password.

A third, the SNP's Alison Thewliss, revealed a 58-year-old constituent with COPD, a walking frame and blood clots in her lung went to the Jobcentre to find the door locked - because the government had just closed it.

Mrs May tried to turn the screw elsewhere on Labour - saying Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell must "apologise to [Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey] for saying she should be lynched."

"He keeps refusing to do this," the Prime Minister said. Mr McDonnell has insisted he was quoting someone else's remarks, but has refused to apologise for doing so.

Today's cash came after a torrid week in Brexit talks that has seen the EU threaten "punishment" on Britain if it is seen to breach transition rules.

The fight's not just with Brussels - Remain-backing Tory Anna Soubry told Theresa May to "sling out" hard Brexiteers from her own party.

DUP MP Ian Paisley Jr quoted his dad's most famous phrase, bellowing: "It's about time the government demonstrated a no surrender attitude to the EU bureaucrats who try to blackmail us, bully us over air flights, passenger duty and everything else!

"Stand up to them man! Stand up to the EU! And let's get on with leaving the EU!"

Theresa May insisted Britain would be leaving the EU's single market and customs union.

But Jeremy Corbyn has often avoided mentioning Brexit since he has plenty of tensions within his own party.

The clash also came after the collapse of privatisation giant Carillion, whose bosses made grovelling apologies yesterday.

Not to mention the Tories awarding a lucrative rail franchise to Virgin Trains - just two minutes after revealing another franchise part-run by the firm was set to collapse within months.

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Watch Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn's full PMQs clash over police funding

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Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have clashed in the House of Commons for their weekly duel of Prime Minister's Questions. The Prime Minister and Labour leader faced off over police funding as they each produced damning statistics proving their point. Labour's leader said police-recorded crime had gone up.

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Intro to cultural relativism

Content Warning: FGM

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Welcome to Human-thropology. In this series Sociocultural Anthropologist Jeanette Moreland explores the wonderful world of Anthropology. Join her as she examines cultures and peoples from across the globe in an effort to better understand humanity. Today, Jeanette examines the question of cultural relativism...

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BME police officers

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Black History Month: Hampshire's PCC and the ICJR at University of Southampton

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As part of Black History month, Hampshire's Police Crime Commissioner Simon Hayes teamed up with the Institute for Criminal Justice Research at the University of Southampton to host Professor Simon Holdaway who delivered a free public lecture on the contribution of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) members to policing in the UK.

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Interview

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Howard Becker - Oral History of Criminology

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Howard S. Becker - Oral History of Criminology interviewed by Brendan Dooley - San Francisco (2015) Keywords: Sociology of deviance, symbolic interactionism, music, piano, marijuana, University of Chicago, labeling, The Outsiders, Erving Goffman, micro versus macro approaches, qualitative research, institutional review boards (IRB).

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It is the first time that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has included online offences in the annual survey and the result has seen the overall crime figure almost double.

John Flatley of the ONS said: "In the past, burglary and theft of vehicles were the high-volume crimes driving trends but their numbers have fallen substantially since then.

"When the CSEW started, fraud was not considered a significant threat and the internet had yet to be invented.

"Today's figures demonstrate how crime has changed, with fraud now the most commonly experienced offence."

But despite the scale of the problem more than 80 per cent of all fraud offences are not reported to the police, meaning many of those responsible can operate without fear of ever been caught.

While the CSEW figures suggest there were 3.6 million cases of fraud last year, police only recorded 622,000 such offences.

Chief Constable Jeff Farrar, from the National Police Chiefs' Council acknowledged that under reporting was a problem.

He said: "These latest figures show that there were 1.9 million cases of fraud on UK-issued cards, which is an increase of 39 per cent on the previous year. The vast majority of these are not reported to the police, who have only seen a 3 per cent increase in fraud offences."

He added: "The ability to commit crime online demonstrates the need for policing to adapt and transform to tackle these cyber challenges."

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Fraud and cyber crime are now the country's most common offences

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It is the first time that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has included online offences in the annual survey and the result has seen the overall crime figure almost double. John Flatley of the ONS said: "In the past, burglary and theft of vehicles were the high-volume crimes driving trends but their numbers have fallen substantially since then.

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Statistics don't reflect the real picture of violent crime in the UK. from www.shutterstock.com

Research has found that the rate of violent crime is 60% higher than official statistics suggest. The Crime Survey for England and Wales is the only source of official statistics on violent crime in the UK. Yet the number of violent crimes published by the Office for National Statistics is capped at five per victim form - even if many more offences were recorded by the survey.

This leads the Office for National Statistics to underestimate the extent of violent crime. When the survey's cap is removed, and the raw data examined, the number of violent crimes increases by 60%. The amount of violent crimes against women, and the amount of violent crimes by domestic perpetrators, both increase by 70%.

We also found that the cap skews the reported distribution of violent crimes. In particular, the significance of domestic violence and violence against women is diminished by the survey's limit, since these kinds of offences are often repeated many times against the same victim. Our research shows that women are the victim of 45% of violent crimes, and that the majority of perpetrators are known to the victims. Violent crime perpetrated by strangers against men - the conventional understanding of "violent crime" - makes up only 25% of cases.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has defended the cap: it says the limit is necessary "to ensure that the estimates are not affected by a very small number of respondents who report an extremely high number of incidents and which are highly variable between survey years".

This was once a reasonable judgement. But today, the survey's much larger sample size and the advancement of statistical techniques means that this argument is no longer valid.

Setting the record straight

And there is a further problem: the survey collects - but does not publish - information about the gender of the victims of violent crime at the same time as their relationship to the perpetrator. This means that there are no official statistics on the number of violent crimes that are domestic violence against women.

The problem continues throughout the criminal justice system. Domestic violence is invisible in police-recorded crime statistics because there is no legal category (and thus no crime code) for "domestic violence". Although there are crime codes for "homicide" and "assault", there is no categorisation of these offences by perpetrator-victim relationship or by the gender of the victim within these police recorded crime statistics.

Artform Canada/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

There have been attempts to address this problem: for instance, there was an experiment with "flagging" domestic violence in 43 different police forces. Separate from the main statistical series, police were asked to record whether the incident was "domestic". But the verdict of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary was that, "in view of the extreme variation in the information provided, it is unlikely that some forces' data accurately reflects the number of repeat victims".

Further confusion is caused by the fact that domestic violence is nearly invisible in prosecution and court data. This is because there is no legal category of "domestic violence" - though, again, there is an experiment with "flagging". A further difficulty is that the Crown Prosecution Service and courts use different units of measurement from the police - counting perpetrators, not crimes - making it hard to identify the success (or otherwise) of the criminal justice system in convicting the perpetrators.

Room for improvement

There is clearly scope for improvement across the survey, the police force and the courts. The Crime Survey for England and Wales is one of the best in the world, with an excellent history of innovation. It is time for the survey to remove the cap on the number of crimes that are reported in official statistics, and also to categorise violent crimes by the sex of the victim and the relationship between victim and perpetrator.

The categories for victim-perpetrator relationship and victim gender should be embedded within legal categories and crime codes to ensure a common measurement system throughout the criminal justice system. The police, prosecution and courts should all be required to collect data on the number of crimes, their victims and their perpetrators. There is a precedent for this: the crime of "rape" is differentiated by the gender of the victim, in order to identify male as well as female victims

UK statistics are as good as any in Europe. But the Council of Europe is asking for better statistics from those countries that sign and ratify the Istanbul Convention to Combat Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, so some improvement can be anticipated in the future.

By developing a consistent, comprehensive system to measure and analyse domestic violent crime, we will be better able to assess what works (and what doesn't) in the effort to reduce - and eventually put a stop to - this violence.

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Official statistics mask extent of domestic violence in the UK

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Research has found that the rate of violent crime is 60% higher than official statistics suggest. The Crime Survey for England and Wales is the only source of official statistics on violent crime in the UK.

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Crime in England and Wales has fallen by 8% over the past year according to statistics released today.

In total, 3,700,349 crimes were recorded by police between January and December 2012. Taking the long view, an even bigger decline can be seen in these Home Office figures, with police recorded crime down 38% since 2002.

Most striking perhaps is the fact that this decline has occurred across so many categories of crime. Since 2012, here has been a 16% reduction in motor vehicle theft, a 15% decline in criminal damage and a 13% decline in robbery. In fact, the only category of crime to show an increase is theft from the person which rose by 8% to 107,471 police-recorded offences.

Alan Travis has more here, where he quotes Jeff Farrar, of the Association of Chief Police Officers:

We cannot be complacent and while overall these results are positive the police service will need to adapt and innovate to continue bringing down crime as their budgets decrease.

Below is a selection of other interesting statistics from the latest figures:

Homicides vs attempted murders

551 homicides (includes murder, manslaughter and infanticide) were reported in the year ending December 2012, a considerable drop on the previous year's total of 638. Homicides are now down to around half of the figure for 2001/2.

Attempted murders also fell, but by a smaller proportion, dropping by 7.6% in comparison to a fall of 13.6% in homicides.

Reported vs recorded

It's important to bear in mind that today's release focuses on police recorded crimes. These are provided to the Home Office by police authorities and forces, not all of whom collect data with the same precision according to a 2007 audit. This is problematic because it means that a higher number in a given area may indicate an improvement in reporting by police rather than a rise in criminality.

What's more, crimes recorded by police are unlikely to represent the total number of crimes that take place. To understand this better, it's useful to also consider the CSEW which asks more than 40,000 people face-to-face about their experiences of, attitudes about and perceptions of a range of crimes.

Though police-recorded crimes are down 8%, the number of crimes reported in the survey has fallen by 5%. 8.9 million crimes were reported in the survey in the year ending December 2012, while the police recorded 3.7 million crimes in this period.

The gap is even more noticeable when looking at specific categories of crime. While police record a 10% reduction in bicycle crime, crime survey responses show a 12% increase. This may suggest that for smaller offences, individuals are less likely to report crimes to the police.

Perception of crime

Another of the more interesting figures is that of the perception of crime. The CSEW asks people whether they think crime is getting worse where they live and nationally. So, people think crime is getting worse - but not where they live. It's the gap between what we know is going on and what we think is going on.

This might reflect public pessimism about the effectiveness of crime prevention. The survey poses the statement 'police and local council are dealing with the anti-social behaviour and crime issues that matter in the local area' - to which 60% of people agreed last year. When faced with the statement 'the criminal justice system as a whole is effective' just 44% agreed.

For the first time, the statistics include new figures from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau showing a breakdown of fraud in the UK. This differs from the police recorded crime - for starters, there's more of them: 441,174 recorded in 2012, compared to around 142,000 by police in the last financial year. Of that, the vast majority is bank fraud: online bank accounts, credit card and cheque fraud accounting for over 50% of all fraud. The NFIB operates a telephone data recording system and the organisation's statistics combine with police figures.

It also records an interesting breakdown of computer fraud, with hacking of social media and email accounts for 1,565 offences.

This is the first year the data is out - next year we should be able to start comparing. It's probably the tip of the iceberg: many fraud offences are not reported to anybody.

We've extracted the key figures for you and made them available to download via the link below. What can you do with them?

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Crime statistics for England & Wales: what's happening to each offence?

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Crime in England and Wales has fallen by 8% over the past year according to statistics released today. In total, 3,700,349 crimes were recorded by police between January and December 2012. Taking the long view, an even bigger decline can be seen in these Home Office figures, with police recorded crime down 38% since 2002.

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An "obsession" with reducing crime is creating pressure on police to "manipulate" crime figures, a senior police officer has said.

Derbyshire's Chief Constable Mick Creedon said numerous officers in "many forces" had told him it was happening.

He said officers were "doing everything they can" to avoid crime going up.

Policing Minister Damian Green said a "robust" inquiry into recording practices by the Inspectorate of Constabulary would report next autumn.

On Tuesday, MPs heard claims that forces were routinely manipulating crime statistics to meet targets.

BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw said it was the first time a chief constable had spoken out in this way and his comments would fuel a debate about the reliability of crime data.

Mr Creedon, who speaks for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) on organised crime, insisted the "real position" was that domestic violence and sexual violence were going up.

He said manipulation of the figures was the "unintended consequence" of pressure from police leaders, inspections and plans drawn up by police and crime commissioners to cut crime.

Addressing the Acpo conference, he said: "Inadvertently we are putting pressure on officers to do all they can to manipulate to create crime reductions."

'Manipulation unacceptable'

Peter Fahy, Greater Manchester Police's chief constable, said it was not about "fiddling" figures, but about the way forces chose to categorise various types of offence.

"There's a huge field of interpretation," he said.

Nobody joins the police service with the intention of recording crime inaccurately
Chief Constable Jeff Farrar, Acpo spokesman on crime recording

Mr Fahy said it was time to move away from the police figures and focus more on the Crime Survey for England and Wales - which draws estimates of crime levels from speaking to 35,000 members of the public.

Meanwhile, Mr Green told the conference that crimes measured by the survey were falling and were less than half of the peak seen in 1995.

The minister said it would be "unacceptable" if police were found to be manipulating the data, adding the Inspectorate of Constabulary's recording practices review would report in autumn 2014.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said mis-recording crime "can never be right".

And Chief Constable Jeff Farrar, Acpo's spokesman on crime recording, insisted that "nobody joins the police service with the intention of recording crime inaccurately".

But he acknowledged that issues including a lack of awareness and knowledge, work pressures, system errors and "the possible pressure to achieve local performance targets" may all contribute to human error.

On Tuesday, Metropolitan Police constable James Patrick - who is currently awaiting disciplinary proceedings - told the House of Commons public administration committee his concerns about crime under-reporting had begun after he joined the force in 2009.

He said he had found robberies being logged as "theft snatch" in order to get them off the books.

And a former West Midlands chief inspector described practices such as recording thefts as "lost property".

Committee chairman, Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin, said he was "shocked" by the claims of such manipulation "on such a wide scale".

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An "obsession" with reducing crime is creating pressure on police to "manipulate" crime figures, a senior police officer has said. Derbyshire's Chief Constable Mick Creedon said numerous officers in "many forces" had told him it was happening. He said officers were "doing everything they can" to avoid crime going up.

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More than 800,000 - or one in five - of all crimes reported to the police each year are not being recorded by officers, a report suggests.

The problem is greatest for victims of violent crime, with a third going unrecorded. Of sexual offences, 26% are not recorded.

An HM Inspectorate of Constabulary report looked at more than 8,000 reports of crime in England and Wales.

The watchdog said the failure to record crime properly was "indefensible".

Home Secretary Theresa May described the findings as "utterly unacceptable", but police representatives said the situation had improved since the study.

The Association of Chief Police Officers said workload pressures, target culture and inadequate supervision all contributed to under-recording.

An unrecorded crime is classed as one that is reported to the police but not recorded as an offence. It means an investigation into the alleged crime is unlikely to happen.

'Serious concern'

The audit reviewed reports of crime between November 2012 and October 2013 across all 43 forces in England and Wales.

It found that:

Among the sample, 37 rape allegations were not recorded as a crime

For 3,842 reported crimes, offenders were given a caution or a penalty notice - but inspectors believe 500 of those should have been charged or given a heavier penalty

3,246 of those offences that were recorded were then deemed to be "no crimes" - but inspectors believe 20% of those decisions were wrong and a crime had been committed

The incidents recorded as "no-crimes" included 200 reports of rape and 250 of violent crime

More than 800 of the victims were not told of the decision to "no-crime" their report

Analysis by Danny Shaw, BBC home affairs correspondent
The under-recording of crime is more than a question of getting the statistics wrong.

If an offence isn't officially logged, it may not be investigated. And without a police inquiry there's no hope of finding the perpetrator and preventing other crimes.

Inspectors say there may well be people on the streets now, able to commit more crimes, who would have been locked up had their original offence been properly dealt with.

There are indications that some forces are improving. But there's also a warning in the report that increasing workload pressures among police - who are having to do more with considerably less - will "sharpen" the incentive not to record crimes.

Chief Inspector of Constabulary Tom Winsor told the BBC that the under-recording of sexual offences was of particular concern and more sex crimes would be reported if victims felt they could trust the police.

"The police need to institutionalise a culture of believing the victim. Every time," he said.

"Now in some cases it may turn out that a crime hasn't been committed, in which case the figures can be changed later.

"But the crime needs to go on the books straight away so that the crime is properly investigated in every case and the victim receives the services which she or he should have."

Jeff Gardner, from Victim Support, told the BBC: "The police absolutely need trust of the public because if they don't have it, there's no communication and police can't police properly."

Police are obliged to inform victims about their decisions but the report found this was not always the case.

Victims may have been under the impression that their crimes were being investigated when they were not, the report said.

'Wheelie bins'

The report looked at every police force in England and Wales and drew national-level statistics from its sample. But it acknowledged there were large regional differences and some forces were very good at crime recording.

West Midlands Police and Lincolnshire Police had an almost perfect record, while Dyfed Powys Police and West Yorkshire were among the worst-performing forces.

Chief Constable Jeff Farrar, lead for crime recording at the Association of Chief Police Officers, told the BBC that forces were not following the rules in the same way.

"As soon as an incident is reported, it is recorded. There's an incident on every police force's system," he said.

"Some forces are immediately recording that as a crime without any investigation; some forces are going perhaps too far in the investigation.

"But the rules do say we need to be satisfied that a crime has been committed."

He said some cases, such as a serious sexual offences, should "absolutely be recorded" but there were some occasions were the public would expect officers to ask a few more questions before recording a crime.

Providing one example from his own Gwent force, he said: "We had in one month an increase of 300 wheelie bin thefts.

"When we looked at that in a bit more detail, because we had recorded them, it would appear if you reported that as a theft you got a new wheelie bin for free from the local authority but if it was damaged, they charged you £80."

'Urgent changes'

The report said relatively little firm evidence had been found of undue pressure being put on officers to manipulate figures.

But in an online survey, some officers and staff did say performance and other pressures were distorting their crime-recording decisions.

The HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) report recommended that standard training established by the College of Policing be provided by each force.

Mrs May said there had been "utterly unacceptable failings" in the way police forces have recorded crime but procedures were improving.

"It is never acceptable for the police to mis-record crime. Failing to do so not only lets down victims, but the wider public who expect to be able to trust the integrity of police recorded crime," she said.

Shadow policing minister Jack Dromey said it was time for Mrs May to "get a grip on this and make urgent changes to the way the police record crime".

Ch Supt Irene Curtis, president of the Police Superintendents' Association, said recorded crime was a measure of demand on police resources rather than police performance.

"HMIC's report covers a period of at least 12 months ago and recognises that considerable improvements have already been made since that period," she said.

Earlier this year an interim report by Mr Winsor, covering 13 forces, made a similar conclusion that a fifth of crimes could be going unrecorded by police.

Last month, official figures showed the number of rapes reported to and recorded by police in England and Wales was at its highest ever level.

The Office for National Statistics said there were 22,116 recorded rapes in the year to June, a rise of 29% on the year before.

Separate statistics from the Crime Survey for England and Wales showed overall crime fell by 16% to 7.1 million cases.

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More than 800,000 - or one in five - of all crimes reported to the police each year are not being recorded by officers, a report suggests. The problem is greatest for victims of violent crime, with a third going unrecorded. Of sexual offences, 26% are not recorded.

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Dark side of crime

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Sylvia Rivera was a key figure in the Stonewall Riots

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Sylvia Rivera was a key figure in the Stonewall Riots

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This banner is from a protest supporting trans prisoners.

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The Home Office has announced that West Yorkshire Police will roll out an expanded scheme of on-the-spot fingerprint scanning - without any public or parliamentary debate. Our Head of Legal Casework Emma Norton explains why our rights could be at risk.

The police have a very difficult job. Protecting the public, fighting crime. It's a job that hasn't got any easier in recent years.

So you can understand why there is always a keen interest in how new technologies can be developed and enhanced to support and promote the police's ability to do their work.

But very bad things can happen when the police get it wrong - which is why vital rights have been enshrined in law to ensure a certain minimum level of protection for suspects.

Over the years, a number of important protections that have been set in place to protect suspects have been eroded.
Stop and scan
Today, shortly after midnight and with little fanfare, the Home Office announced that West Yorkshire Police will roll out a scheme letting officers armed with portable scanners check - on the street - anyone's fingerprints against both criminal and immigration databases.

There's no recognition of how breathtakingly invasive this proposal is. There is no discussion of consent. Or of the importance of legal advice before people should be asked to hand over this kind of information about themselves. Or what may happen if someone declines a request.

Or of what will be done with it - including the fact that it will be shared with the Home Office to target undocumented migrants.

What about vulnerable people? What about children and young people? What about people being targeted for illegitimate reasons, like the colour of their skin? This Government's policy of creating a "hostile environment" for migrants suggests that this is very likely to happen.
Cutting out Parliament and the people
This scheme is part of a pattern of the police using radical privacy-invading technology without proper public consultation or meaningful parliamentary oversight.

Much like the facial recognition technology that is increasingly being deployed by police forces, it is being presented to us after the event and with little fanfare and is being made available to more and more officers across the country.

In this case, we learned about it via a sneaky gov.uk post early on a Saturday morning.
If you have been affected by these new measures, please tell Liberty about it and get legal advice quickly. [This blog was updated on 10 February 2018 at 20:15 to reflect a change in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984].

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Why it's not okay for police to quietly roll out on-the-spot fingerprint scanning

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The Home Office has announced that West Yorkshire Police will roll out an expanded scheme of on-the-spot fingerprint scanning - without any public or parliamentary debate. Our Head of Legal Casework Emma Norton explains why our rights could be at risk. The police have a very difficult job.