§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will publish in the Official Report a table showing the percentage increase in the various types of crime since 1979 in London, the inner cities and in the rest of the country, together with such information as he has available concerning any relationship between crime and the rate of unemployment.
§ Mr. MellorNumbers of notifiable offences recorded in police force areas are published each year in the Command Paper "Criminal Statistics, England and Wales", and most recently for 1986 in a Home Office "Statistical Bulletin" issue number 4/87 (table 6). Numbers of offences recorded in each London borough in 1978 and 1980 are published in table 147 of "1983–84 Annual Abstract of Greater London Statistics", a copy of which is available in the Library. More recent figures for London boroughs are also placed regularly in the Library.
Research has not shown significant associations between increases in recorded crime and increases in unemployment. The article "Unemployment and Crime" in the Home Office "Research and Planning Research Bulletin No. 14," reviewed research evidence on the association between unemployment and crime and concluded that little could be learnt from studies of this topic at aggregate level.