The fear of crime (From Times Series)

The fear of crime

9:00am Thursday 22nd May 2008

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One of the long term aims of the Government and the police is not just to cut crime itself but also the fear of crime, which has increased in recent years even as crime rates fall.

Last month, Labour MP David Taylor told a House of Commons debate on the issue: "The British crime survey for 2007 records overall crime falling by 32 per cent since 1997 and 5.5 million fewer victims than in 1995.

"Yet fear of crime continues to paralyse too many lives, both old and young alike."

The Home Office website has this to add: "We believe everybody has the right to feel safe as they go about their daily lives."

Quite so, but not if you're Jewish and you live in Barnet.

Hate crime in the borough, including anti-Semitic crime, is low according to both the police and a committee formed by the council last year to study the problem.

But according to Hendon MP Andrew Dismore, Jews live "in a permanent state of siege and underlying fear".

He made the claim this week in a debate on anti-Semitism in which he argued that the cost of security in Jewish schools should be met by additional Government cash.

"I visit schools all the time and the students - from the little kids to sixth formers - tell me time and again about the anti-Semitic incidents they experience," he said.

"The threat and reality of anti-Semitism is with us. We are talking not only about Islamic extremists, but about the far right, and sometimes about plain nutcases."

It's difficult to believe that in a borough with very little hate crime, little kids are experiencing anti-Semitism from Islamic extremists, the far right and plain nutcases.

It's also difficult to understand quite how such hyberbole helps reduce the fear of a crime that, while particularly heinous, is relatively rare in Barnet.

The single gravest threat to children in London generally is not based on their ethnicity or religious persuasion, but the simple fact that they are young people in a society and culture that is falling prey to knife crime.

Mr Dismore goes on: "Jewish people are the only community in our country who live in a permanent state of siege and underlying fear.

"It is not fair that parents are expected to pay for what every other parent takes for granted - the security and safety of their children at school."

Sadly, there are probably a vast proportion of parents who do not take the security of their children at school for granted. The threat they face is not Islamic terrorists but - even more ominously - their classmates and peers.

If more money was to be spent on security, it would be better spent on combating knife crime, not tackling the less immediate threat of anti-Semitism.

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