Crime Level

The Home Office's periodic British Crime Survey estimates that the true level of crime (the sorts, anyway, which inform the official figures) is about four times that which is registered in the annual statistics. Quite often, especially in the financial services sector, businesses do not report crimes against themselves for fear of lowering their public image. Many citizens today are not insured against car theft or property loss (because they cannot afford the premiums), so they have no incentive to tell the police if they become victims. A steep statistical rise in crime can sometimes arise not from a real growth in a particular type of conduct but from a new policing policy - offences of "lewd dancing" rose by about 300 percent during 12 months in the 1980s in Manchester, but only because the zealous Chief Constable James Anderton had deployed a great many officers in gay nightclubs. Sometimes the enactment of a new range of offences or the possibility of committing old offences in a new way (like computer offences involving fraud and deception) can cause an upward jolt in crime levels.