Why claim crime's up when it's down?

In her most recent contribution to the Putney SW15 website, the Conservative MP remarked that "We?ve recently seen a large increase in burglaries."

As you know, I've been charting crime in our area since the Summer of 2007 - and Miss Greening's got this just about as wrong as she could manage.



This table shows the average burglary rate in Putney since 2007: the figures for each of the six Putney wards aggregated together. Does that look like a large increase in burglaries - or a big fall in burglaries?

And just so we're clear, in June - the month the most recent stats are available for - burglaries in East Putney, Roehampton, Southfields, West Hill and West Putney were all below both the borough-wide and London-wide average; and in Thamesfield - the one ward out of six where the rate's higher, burglaries were still down markedly on May.

This is a stark example of a politician pushing a sensationalist line that bears no relation to fact. Whether Miss Greening decided to scaremonger because she thinks talking about everything that's wrong with Putney is how an opposition politician should campaign I can't speculate. But it's wrong and it brings politics into even further disrepute.