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There are lies, damn lies and statistics. And beyond that  there are the criminal statistics, which are supposed to tell us how much of which crimes have been committed during whatever period but which are so beset by misreporting, faulty mathematics and at times political manipulation as to be pretty well worthless. For example, some offences are not reported because the victim sees no point in doing so; ask someone who leaves home in the morning to find their car has been broken into whether they will tell the police and you are likely to be treated to the kind of pitying smile usually bestowed on the stupefyingly naòve. Or ask the same question of someone who has picked up a black eye in a Saturday night fight at the pub and prepare for the scorn at such a slur on their resilient stoicism. Examples like these are drawn together in some of the statistics; between 1995 and 2005 reported serious wounding incidents in England and Wales rose by 50 per cent but some 70 per cent of that type of offence are not reported.

The recent spate of gun and knife crime – including high profile murders such as that of the 11-year-old Rhys Jones in Liverpool, apparently by another young person – has been taken as evidence that the country is descending into a chaos of uncontrolled violence, overwhelmingly the work of gangs of young feral psychopaths hiding their faces under hoods and escaping on mountain bikes while their victim dies on the street – or, in some cases, in their own home. “There is no doubt” said Enver Soloman, Deputy Director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies recently, “there are more kids carrying knives, but it’s not clear why”. In the first eight months of 2007 no less than 17 teenagers were shot dead in London alone, six of them between February and August.  The response has been predictable, from the tabloids and from opposition politicians: the government must shake themselves out of their apathy about crime, employ more police officers and encourage courts to send more people to prison for longer terms (a suggestion which the courts have eagerly taken up). In fact New Labour can hardly be accused of complacency about crime; since they came to power in 1997, energised by Blair’s promise to be tough on crime they have added some 3000 offences to the statute book – which means that behaviour which was recently legal will now land you in trouble with the law. At the same time the choice of sentences available to the courts has been extended, for example there is the Indeterminate Sentence which in theory can result in someone doing life for an offence which once attracted a term of imprisonment of only months. And as a result the prisons are crammed and inmates are forced to spend time in emergency cells in police stations and court houses.

Cameron

This is the kind of mess likely to cost some politicians a lot of votes and to win lots for others. Hoping to be among the latter is Tory leader David Cameron. It is only just over a year ago - in July 2006 - that, in his efforts to establish himself as a new breed of boss of the nasty party, he drew on the insight into the struggles of working class life instilled in him by an Eton education and a posh address in Notting Hill to declare that everyone else had misunderstood the problem of youth crime and that we have to show a lot more love to the people who commit it: “ hoodies are more defensive than offensive. They’re a way of staying invisible in the street. In a dangerous environment the best thing to do is keep your head down, don’t stand out. For some, the hoodie represents all that’s wrong about youth culture in Britain today. For me, adult society’s response to the hoodie shows how far we are from finding the long-term answers to put things right. So when you see a child walking down the road, hoodie up, head down, moody, swaggering, dominating the pavement – think what brought that child to that moment ”. Having spent the last year or so reflecting on this slice of wisdom and spurred on by the latest news of violent youth crime, Cameron has decided that a different approach would be more voter-attractive: no longer in favour of understanding hoodies, on 22 August  he lashed out at what he called the rising tide of youth violence and anti-social behaviour: “Common sense suggests that with young  people you need to hit them where it hurts most: in their life style and their aspirations” was how he revealed his conversion to a more traditional style of vote chasing with a proposal that young offenders, apart from any other penalty imposed on them, be disqualified from applying for a driving licence. He is apparently under the impression that seasoned practitioners of anti-social behaviour would be impressed enough by such a restriction to persuade them to do as the court and a Tory leader wanted.

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