An astounding change is happening to life in England and Wales that most people don’t know about, and when they are told they don’t believe it. Most crime, including violence, has fallen by a remarkable 90% over the past 30 years. But only 6% of people believe it, while 61% think crime is going up. This great denial is the background cause of the prison overflow crisis, as politicians (of all parties) stir up voters to demand ever higher sentences as the imaginary cure to their imaginary soaring crime.
All western European countries enjoy this same remarkable social improvement, with research over decades offering myriad reasons why: populations spending longer in education, CCTV, better security for cars and homes, and young people staying at home to play video games of fantasy crime instead of entertaining themselves with the real thing. Removing brain-harming lead from petrol and abortion of unwanted foetuses at risk of future child neglect are other possible explanations.
This generation inhabits a far less violent society, with many fewer homicides, thefts, burglaries and serious violent crimes, but also far less casual social violence in brawls and punch-ups. Older folk nostalgic for an orderly golden age when no one bothered locking their front door usually situate it just beyond their own memories, in their grandparents’ halcyon days. But radical social change leads to less acceptance of any violence. Online fraud and cybercrime are the ones that are steeply rising, though they are committed by quite different criminals.
The nature of violence has changed, too. Official statistics from the national crime survey for England and Wales show that 65% of violent crime incidents result in no injury to the victim. (Though “no injury” can still mean people are seriously harmed by terrifying threats of violence or by sexual abuse and intimidation, of course.) There remains a dissonance between the way life is and the crime people fear.
Single landmark horror cases – from the Moors murderers to Fred West and Axel Rudakubana – are seared for ever into the nation’s collective nightmares. Too often these freak incidents drive our sentencing policy. Five years after the trial of the 10-year-old killers of James Bulger, the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act abolished doli incapax – the requirement to prove that a child under 14 knew their act was morally wrong. The toughening of sentencing law time and again in response to public outrage at particular horrors, with no balancing context, is a root cause of overflowing prisons.
It’s happening again in the case of two of those responsible for the heartrending death of PC Andrew Harper. Harper’s family, and every chief constable in England and Wales, protested vigorously that they were due to be released under new rules after serving only half of their 13-year manslaughter sentences. The prime minister has asked the justice secretary to find a way to ensure the men stay inside: the law must be bent to this case. Harper’s Law, which in 2022 imposed life sentences for the killers of emergency workers, was introduced only as a result of their trial, so can’t be retrospectively applied. But anything singling out these men will be challenged in court. Blocking early release for all those imprisoned for manslaughter would fill too many cells: besides, that’s rough justice when some have sentences of one year, others for 24 years or life.
The law is set by parliament for independent courts to apply, regardless of politics: look at Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump or Viktor Orbán for examples of those who break that democratic principle. We should be uneasy at our government declaring publicly that it is chasing after a way to bend laws to lock up two particular offenders.
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David Gauke, a former justice secretary and lord chancellor, looks at Andy Burnham’s predicament with some sympathy but some frustration. Overcrowding, over-sentencing and under-building was Labour’s wretched inheritance and he was summoned by the new government in 2024 to find an answer to England and Wales’s bursting prisons. His excellent report described sentence inflation and overuse of custody as unsustainable. He called for the suspension of most sentences of a year or less, which are proven to do no good. He advocated for more early release for good behaviour, rewarding engaging in education and work in prison, and for a boost to probation and community sentencing provision. In response to his report, early release in England and Wales was cut from 50% to 33% of sentence served.
But, he says, “it was a mistake” for Burnham to start conceding early release exemptions for rape and child sex offences. “He has used up the spare capacity freed with these exemptions, opening the gates to other exemptions for heinous crimes.” Burnham is following Gauke’s recommendations to let more women out. “We supported deporting foreign offenders too, but it’s difficult: either countries won’t accept them, or they do but let them out, to great outrage.” He feels sorry for Burnham’s dilemma: “How easy for us ex-politicians to suggest liberal remedies,” he says. In power, he knows, politicians’ fear of public storms over exceptionally horrible crimes ratchets sentences ever upwards.
Penal populism by all parties got us here, but even reducing sentences from now on would take years to empty cells. Gauke wonders why England and Wales are outliers, with lower crime now than some similar countries yet the highest incarceration rate in western Europe. “No, prison doesn’t make crime fall. Many countries with lower prison rates have even less crime.”
The great question is how to convey true crime facts to a populace besieged by true crime stories, where gripping tales overwhelm mere statistics. Here’s a curiosity the government could begin with: though convinced of soaring crime everywhere else, people don’t in fact feel afraid in their own neighbourhoods. Their fears are roused by scabrously lying, vote-seeking politicians and timorous governments not daring to challenge crime untruths, while the hostile media terrify the living daylights out of everyone. At home, people do really know they are relatively safe. Just possibly, as Burnham confronts the prison emergency, he may be the first to dare start telling crime truths like these.
