Crime victims still need justice

Sep 18 2007 Liverpool Daily Post

EVERYONE appreciates that the police have an extremely difficult job to do. With so many competing claims on their attention, and with finite resources to meet them, they have to make critical decisions all the time.

This, no doubt, partly explains why almost 50,000 crimes on Merseyside were deemed "unsolvable" by police last year and not investigated at all.

Several reasons have been given for this – from insufficient information or evidence, to the pressures created by too much paperwork and government targets.

Nevertheless, a crime is a crime, and these figures mean that, for every crime unsolved, there is a victim of crime who has not got justice, and there is also a criminal who is still free to roam the streets and possibly commit further offences.

It also contributes to a crisis of confidence in the police’s ability to solve crimes, particularly if they are not deemed "serious" enough. The public are also entitled to ask where all the extra funding has been going?

This, no doubt, explains why, despite falling crime figures, people still feel dissatisfied with certain aspects of the police’s performance, and do not necessarily feel safer on the streets.

When police get it right, it rarely merits attention. But when they get it wrong, everyone knows about it.

A whole raft of measures has been introduced to shore up public confidence in the police’s ability to deal with so- called low-level crime which never‘- theless has a huge impact on people’s’ lives, such as the introduction of police community support officers (PCSOs).

Likewise, few would disagree with police time being dedicated to more serious crimes and to cases where there is potential for an offender to be brought to justice.

Nevertheless, the suspicion that whole areas of crime – minor as they may be – are effectively being left to fall by the wayside will do little to increase public confidence that it is worth their while reporting a crime, and that it will be investigated thoroughly when they do.