§ 22. Mr. RendelTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement about current trends in(a) conviction rates and (b) crime rates. [53531]
§ Mr. MichaelThe likelihood of an offender being convicted rose in 1997, and the use of cautions has declined. Comparing recorded crime with the number of defendants found guilty for indictable offences shows that in 1985 there was one defendant found guilty for every eight crimes. This rose to 18 crimes per defendant in 1993 but in 1997 dropped to 14 per defendant.
The latest Notifiable Offences Bulletin, covering April 1997 to March 1998, shows the fifth consecutive fall in crimes recorded by the police. This continuing downward trend is confirmed by the findings of the 1998 British Crime Survey, which gives a count of crime that includes crimes not reported to the police and those not recorded. This shows a fall between 1995 and 1997 in nearly all of the offence types it measures. This is the first time, since 1981, that the survey has recorded an overall fall.