Crime down in August

When I was conducting my Southfields survey earlier this Autumn one of the things I wanted to find out was how the reality: that Southfields ward - away from the Wandsworth shopping centre - has one of the lowest crime rates anywhere in the borough squared with residents' perceptions of crime in their area.

The results were, unfortunately, not that surprising: a large percentage of residents felt that their area was actually less safe than when they first moved there. There is very clearly a disjuncture between fear of crime and the reality of it and that's something I think that politicians - especially opposition politicians, who sometimes believe that talking up the threat of crime helps win them votes - the media and the Police all need to work harder to address.

This month's crime figures bear out just how safe an area Putney really is. Crime is down in most categories as you can see from the table below. For the first time this month I've colour-coded the statistics: red means the figure is up from last month, green means it's lower or no change.

The most impressive figures again come from Roehampton. There is a widely-held perception that Roehampton is a notoriously dangerous place. It simply isn't true. Yes, there is still a lot of work to do to make the area an even safer place to live, but from some of the comments I hear levelled against Roehampton you'd sometimes think people were talking about Al Capone's Chicago! I think the figures show otherwise, and I'd especially like to applaud the progress on cutting thefts and handling offences the Safer Neighbourhood team here have been making.

Here's the table for August: