Violent Crimes

The crime stats came out today. I always ignore the headline figures about the total crime rate because it is a near meaningless figure – one murder is treated the same as one minor drug offence. Also certain categories of crime will go up and down (drug offences) depending on how much policing is done.

Hence I have always focused on violent crimes. Partly because they are the most serious – and what concern people the most. But partly because they are the most likely to be reported.

So what has happened to the four major categories of violent crimes:

• Homicides down 23.6% from 127 to 97
• Serious Assaults resulting in injuries down 5.7% from 11941 to 11260
• Serious Assaults not resulting in injuries down 6.2% from 10324 to 9679
• Common Assaults up 2.0% from 23070 to 23526

This is only the second time since 1999, the number of violent crimes has decreased.