Crime rate soars as criminals walk free

The true picture of rising levels of violent crime in England and Wales and historically low conviction rates can be revealed today by The Observer.

An investigation shows that conviction rates for many of the most violent crimes have been in freefall since Labour came to power in 1997 and are now well below 10 per cent. The chronically low figures for convictions come at the same time as reports that violent crime is increasing.

An analysis of Home Office figures reveals that only 9.7 per cent of all 'serious woundings', including stabbings, that are reported to the police result in a conviction. For robberies the figure falls to 8.9 per cent and for rape, it is 5.5 per cent.

The figures show that, 10 years after Tony Blair pledged to be 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime', the chances of getting away with rape, robbery, sexual assault or seriously wounding another person have never been higher.

The Observer's analysis presents a fresh political challenge to the new Home Secretary, John Reid, who is struggling to get a grip over a department that he has described as 'not fit for purpose'. The figures show that recorded totals of these types of crime have risen steeply and while convictions have risen a little, they have not kept pace.

The record under Labour is worst for two crimes that arouse deep public concern. Serious woundings have risen by more than half in 10 years to almost 20,000 attacks each year, but their conviction rate has fallen from 14.8 to 9.7 per cent. Nearly 13,000 rapes were recorded by police in the year from April 2004, double the total for 1997, and over the period the conviction rate collapsed from 9.2 to 5.5 per cent. There was, however, a fall in the number of burglaries and the conviction rate for them rose - but only by 0.5 per cent.

The fall in total conviction rates began under the Tories in 1980 and Labour promised, before it won the 1997 election, that it would put this trend into reverse. Despite its failure to do so, Labour's ministers have claimed repeatedly that serious crime has been falling.

The Home Office insisted in a written statement yesterday that 'long term trends show substantial declines in levels of violent crimes'. The former Home Secretary Charles Clarke claimed earlier this year that the main problem society faces is not crime but the fear of it, and he set up a working party to investigate ways of making people believe the official position - that the huge rises in the levels of recorded violent and sexual crime are illusory, the result of more victims having the confidence to go to the police.

But The Observer investigation shows that since 1980, serious woundings have more than quadrupled, and recorded rapes have increased nearly elevenfold.

Last night, the country's top police officers working in the field rejected the claim that these figures did not reflect a real increase in the incidence of such crimes.

Terry Grange, Chief Constable of Dyfed Powys and the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) spokesman on domestic violence and sex crime, who heads a team of more than 20 researchers, said: 'I don't think you can sensibly deny that there is a higher incidence of rape and a more routine use of violence, and also of weapons-based violence where it used to be fists and feet.'

He was backed by another Acpo expert, Leicestershire Chief Constable Matt Baggott, and also by Crown Court judges spoken to by The Observer. According to Baggott, the surge in late-night drinking was exposing young people to higher risks of both physical and sexual violence.

He called for a full debate on this shift in social habits: 'We need to line up the data from the health service with what we get from the police. There is a profit-driven competitiveness around alcohol and one of its consequences is young people becoming victims. We need to begin a fundamental, objective analysis of what has been happening.'

Judges said that serious offences of this type were not only more common, but had become more brutal and degrading. Crown Court judges said that they were routinely hearing horrifying cases that were once so rare that they would have been reserved for members of the High Court bench.

Last week, John Reid, echoing a pledge made earlier by the Prime Minister, promised to 'rebalance criminal justice' in order to 'to make the public feel safe again ... I won't rest until the law and the justice system works for law-abiding people, not criminals.'

However, The Observer's investigation reveals that fewer than a third of the 20,000 people acquitted of serious offences in the Crown Court last year owed their freedom to 'not guilty' verdicts by judges, not juries. Cases were often discharged by judges, usually when the prosecution decided not to proceed - because cases were not ready, because victims or other witnesses withdrew or had been intimidated, or because Crown Prosecution Service lawyers decided that the evidence was 'unreliable'.

The answer, said judges, was not to make sweeping changes in the law to reduce suspects' protections, and hence risk wrongful convictions, but to find ways of getting the CPS and the police to work more closely together when investigating crimes so that the evidence is more watertight.