Are our towns and cities getting more dangerous? There are currently 176 UK crime ‘black spots’ where no robberies get solved.

Analysis by politics expert, Dr Steve McCabe

Transcript

00:00Well, crime is a really emotive issue. People feel that they're at risk. The reality is

00:07that serious crime is on the decline, although we hear a lot about murders, and of course

00:12that gets investigated. But you're absolutely right, of course, that the issue is the antisocial

00:17behaviour, and of course it comes from younger people, dare I say it, and older people don't

00:23tend to do this. But hey, it's a behavioural thing, there's obviously a cultural aspect

00:29to this. I think the problem is, of course, the sanctions are no longer there, the idea

00:35of being caught by the local police officer and marched down to the police station and

00:38given a good talk, it doesn't work like that anymore because of course we don't have police

00:42on the street. So there is undoubtedly a case that people feel a lot less safe on the streets,

00:49and indeed we hear, particularly in the London moment, there is an issue of people on their

00:53cell phone and it's been stolen by people on bikes or motorcycles. And indeed, my experience

01:00of being in city centres recently is that they're a great place because they're pedestrianised,

01:04but of course it's the men and women delivering food on bikes, many of which are electric,

01:10moving at speed. Obviously it's not illegal, but of course it's a big problem, and of course

01:14it makes people feel unsafe. I'm reminded of what happened in New York in the 1970s,

01:19the parts of New York became effectively no-go zones, and of course a new mayor came in and

01:23he effectively said, you know, we're not going to allow this, we're going to clamp

01:26down every sort of act of criminality, including dropping paper on the ground. And indeed,

01:31it was about taking back control of the streets, but of course that takes a tremendous amount

01:36of resource and determination by the authorities to do that, and at present I don't think we're

01:42at that sort of state. I mean, we heard a lot about this in terms of the previous administration

01:46of the Conservatives, who were always traditionally wedded to law and order. If you're in a nice

01:50leafy suburb, you're probably okay, but of course if you're walking through an inner

01:55city part of any major city in this country, you probably do feel quite fearful.