Experts deride report on crime and moral decline

Leading experts on law and order have dismissed a claim that Britain has one of the highest crime rates in the developed world, caused by a decline in faith and moral values.

The report by the right-of-centre thinktank Civitas adds that British policing is among the worst in the world.

It says that France, Germany and the US have had more success in tackling the "sharp rises in crime" since the 1960s triggered by a "decline in shared values".

The report, by Norman Dennis and George Erdos, says the Home Office's claim that crime is low and falling is false.

The Conservatives seized on the report, dealing with a topic likely to be central to the forthcoming general election.

The shadow home secretary, David Davis, said: "The findings ... are a direct consequence of this government's failed crime policy."

The report says burglaries have increased more than fivefold, from 72,000 in 1964 to 402,000 last year, and that police numbers have not kept pace with crime.

In 1921 there were 57,000 police officers dealing with 103,000 crimes - two to each officer - but in 2002/2003 134,000 police officers had to deal with 5,899,000 crimes - 44 each.

Criminologists reacted with some bemusement. Professor Mike Hough, of the Institute for Criminal Policy Research at Kings College London, said: "They say crime is rising, and it is not, and they say the solution is community policing, which is what the police are doing."

Barry Irving of the Police Foundation, an independent organisation, called the report "simplistic". It failed to take into account changes in the reporting and recording of crime, the huge change in property ownership, and the great increase in material wealth, meaning there were more goods to steal.

The claim that the British police were among the worst in the world was "outrageous ... thing to say. Other forces would not spend their time sending their officers to the UK to learn if that was the case."

The report says a moral decline resulting from the 60s cultural revolutions has fuelled criminality.

"The real problem is the loss of internalised moral principles that prevent people from committing crimes in the first place.

"Young people who grow up in troubled and dysfunctional households in which moral values are not inculcated, who attend schools where teachers are afraid or unwilling to teach the difference between right or wrong, who live in communities in which the influence of religious faith is negligible, will naturally be drawn towards the self-gratification and situational ethics that predominate in contemporary culture."

The two authors have a history of controversial work and their research has been questioned. In 1992 they said the liberal establishment had been ignoring clear links between family breakdown and social disorder.

In 2000 they wrote a report with a third author which called the Stephen Lawrence inquiry "a Stalinist show trial".

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "Your chance of being a victim is now at its lowest level for more than 20 years - about the same as it was in 1981."