This morning David Cameron spoke at Demos, launching an inquiry at the think tank about character — a subject which has been on Demos director Richard Reeves's mind ever since his big Prospect essay on the same subject, which you can read here.
I didn't go the launch (meetings, sadly), but just read the transcript. In similar vein to his big society speech, it sees the Tories engaging further with research normally cited only on the left, especially his quoting of Leon Feinstein —who "has shown that the extent to which positive attributes have developed by the age of ten has a profound impact on a child’s success in adult life"—a favourite thinker both in progressive think tanks, and Ed Balls's DCSF. Its interesting too, given that the major initiative the Tories have for improving character amongst the young is their push on civic service, as discussed here previously, and as promoted in one of Steve Hilton's strategy emails, as revealed everywhere last week.
But more immediately pricking my interest, was this from James Forsyth over at the Spectator, who was at the event—and heard Frank Field (who was also speaking) come up with an extraordinary claim...
"At the Demos event on character this morning, Frank Field came out with a quite remarkable statistic: that for the last year for which there are records, two years ago, there were more violent crimes against the person in his constituency, Birkenhead, than there were in the entire country 50 years ago or 100 years ago. It's one of those statistics which shows just how dramatic the social changes over the past half-century have been."This grabbed my attention largely because I've heard Frank make this claim many times before, especially during the time we were writing our civic service piece. Frank's view, citing Geoffrey Gorer's work on the English character, was that working-class culture became strikingly more civilised around the end of the 19th century. But this particular claim about Birkenhead always seemed implausible—that in a fast urbanising and industrialising area of the north of England violent crimes were so much lower today. But what do I know? I'm not a criminologist. The last time I tried to dig into this I did find some striking evidence (see the picture to the top right) showing the continual and sharp rise in recorded crime over the 20th century — giving some semblance of support. But this seems like it might very well be an issue of what the police bothered to record, while in the House of Commons research paper comes the homicide rates below: a sharp rise, yes, but nothing like the increase needed to back up Frank's claim. So: calling all criminologists — can Frank's dramatic stat about Birkenhead possibly be true?
UPDATE: Frank Field, and the "english murder miracle"
Thanks to the wonders of putting this out on Twitter, I was introduced to Professor David Wilson. Here is, very roughly, his take on Frank Field, murder, and the "English miracle".
Most criminologists refuse to say anything about crime statistics, because what they record is so socially constructed. But even so there is no doubt that recorded crime, especially violent crime, has risen since the Second World War—and there were sharp rises since the 1970s. Debate about to why that is, but it has something to do with the greater control and recording of crime statistics by the police. But even having said that, it is impossible to say society has become more violent. In the past there was a great deal of violence.Shorter version? We don't know. Anyone else care to agree/disagree?
Here there is something called the "English miracle" in which the English murder rate was remarkable stable between 1890 and 1939: never going above 120 murders a year in England and Wales. But with a bit of digging we found that 50% of every murder trial was paid for out of the rates, so it was in the interest of the police not to have too many murders, which would involve tax going up. So while murder was very stable, police would often attribute suspicious deaths to suicide.
So on Frank Field’s statistics it is important to note that the numbers he claims come from the number of murder trials, which were in term determined by the tolerance of taxpayers, who in turn determined the quantity of murder trials.
