Crime Research

Reviews Equipment Crime

I am going to be looking at crime, particularly in the London area to get an idea of how often it happens, how violent it is and how feasible a scenario like my film is. I will look at police reports, councils statistics, look into prisons and find out what convicts have to say for themselves. I also want to find out about the motivation and how realistically this can be compared to my film.

Crime

There are 2 types of crime statistics that you might hear about:

Recorded Crime - This is crime reported to the police. These statistics provide a good measure of trends in well-reported crimes. They are an important indicator of police workload and can be used for analysing local crime patterns

British Crime Survey (BCS) - These statistics are based on interviews and can provide a better reflection of the true extent of crime. For the crime types it covers, the BCS can provide a better reflection of the true extent of crime because it includes crimes that are not reported to the police. The BCS count also gives a better indication of trends in crime over time because it is unaffected by changes in levels of reporting to the police and in police recording practices.

(http://www.crimestoppers-uk.org/crime-prevention/latest-crime-statistics)

Statistics

Figures taken in 2007/2008Metropolitan police figures reveal an increase in gun crime incidents across London of nearly nine per cent.
The Met's statistics show 246 incidents of 'Trident gun crime' were recorded between April 2007 and March 2008, 8.8 per cent above the 226 incidents seen in the preceding 12 months.
Operation Trident is the Met's effort to tackle black-on-black gun violence in the capital, where highly-publicised cases have sparked fear of gun crime across the UK.
In London gun-enabled crime fell by 1.4 per cent while all other forms of crime in the city experienced falls in the last year.
The number of homicides dropped from 168 to 160 while violent crime saw an eight per cent fall, checking the 31.9 per cent leap in 2006/07.

(http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2008/04/16/london-crime-figures-show-gun-problem-remains)

Figures taken in 2009
Senior officers said there were “grave concerns” over the rises.

The number of offences involving guns — which also includes cases where criminals claimed to be armed — soared by 49 per cent to 3,306 cases, up from 2,224 in 2008.

While many involved air guns or even fake or imitation weapons, senior detectives have told the Standard there was a worrying rise in the number of gangland shootings.

Overall crime in the capital in 2009 was at its lowest level for 10 years, with significant falls in youth violence and knife attacks.

But gangsters engaged in drug and turf wars are increasingly using firearms to settle scores, and often only the skill of paramedics prevented shootings becoming murders.

(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23798046-gangland-shootings-lead-to-dramatic-rise-in-london-gun-crime.do)

It is important to take into account the different police work that surrounds gun crime. On a BBC crime watch page there is a video and explanation about how police and forensics can trace bullets from guns. This gives a good indication of the seriousness that firearms carry with them. To view go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/crimewatch/solved/forensicfiles/ballistics.shtml. It also highlights the fact that guns are used, and they are used a lot and if you know where to get them it is not that difficult to do so.

Also below is a crime chart form sutton found at http://www.police.uk/crime/?q=Sutton,%20Greater%20London%20SM1%202LB,%20UK#crimetypes. This specifies the amount of crime that has gone on in this area and what crime it is.