London - "Fewer crimes means fewer victims," the British Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, declared yesterday as the number of recorded crimes in England and Wales rose by 12 per cent in the year ending March 1999 despite the underlying trend showing a fall in the crime rate, writes Rachel Donnelly.
The rise in the number of recorded crimes is partly a result of a new counting system, designed to give a more accurate figure by focusing on the number of victims rather than the perpetrator, and added more than half a million offences to the overall figure. Figures based on the old counting system, published side-by-side with the new system, recorded a 1.4 per cent fall in recorded crime in 1998/1999, but still far lower than the 8 per cent fall in crime recorded in 1997/1998.