Targets focus 'allowed crime rise'

The Home Office's top civil servant has admitted in a leaked document that serious violent crime has been allowed to rise due to a focus on targets.

The department's permanent secretary Sir David Normington said there were now more offences such as murders, serious assaults and rapes than a decade ago.

In a 101-page briefing paper for new Home Office ministers last month, he suggested that because police had been given incentives to tackle less serious offences in a bid to reduce crime figures, they were less able to combat violent incidents.

Targets for reducing overall crime previously had a "focus on volume", according the document obtained by the Mail on Sunday.

"This meant that the police and other practitioners had incentives to tackle the more frequent but less serious offences as opposed to the more serious ones," he added.

Sir David said the Government's strategy would now focus on violent crime as it strives to get serious violence figures down.

He wrote: "In view of the fact that more serious violence has not reduced in the way that we would have wanted in recent years, and that these offences cause the most harm to individual victims and to society as a whole, our long-term strategy on violence focuses on seriousness. This includes homicides, serious wounding and serious sexual offences such as rape.

"Recorded crime statistics do indicate that despite recent falls, the levels of the most serious violence are higher than they were 10 years ago."

A Home Office spokeswoman said recorded crime fell 6% last year, and all types of violent crime had gone down by 40% since 1997.

"But we know there is more work to do - with particular crime types, and in particular areas," she said. "Although it represents less than 1% of recorded crime, reducing serious violence will always be a priority for us. We announced a new focus on serious violence earlier this year - to save lives, reduce harm and protect the public."