ENGLAND LIES TO UNDERCOUNT GUN CRIMES

Gun crime 60% higher than official figures
The true level of gun crime is far higher than the Government admits
in official statistics, it can be revealed.

By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 8:22AM BST 19 Oct 2008

Figures to be published by the Home Office this week will
massively understate the scale of the problem.

Data provided to The Sunday Telegraph by nearly every police
force in England and Wales, under freedom of information laws,
show that the number of firearms incidents dealt with by officers
annually is 60 per cent higher than figures stated by the Home Office.

Last year 5,600 firearms offences were excluded from the official
figures. It means that, whereas the Home Office said there were
only 9,800 offences in 2007/8, the real total was around 15,400.
The latest quarterly figures, due to be released on Thursday, will
again exclude a significant number of incidents.

The explanation for the gulf is that the Government figures only
include cases where guns are fired, used to "pistol whip" victims,
or brandished as a threat.

Thousands of offences including gun-smuggling and illegal
possession of a firearm - which normally carries a minimum five-
year jail sentence - are omitted from the Home Office's headline
count, raising questions about the reliability of Government crime data.

Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: "These
alarming new figures not only highlight the appalling state of gun
crime in this country, but also remind us just how poor the
Government's statistics actually are.

"Crime statistics must also be compiled and published independent
of the Home Office, and crime mapping rolled out so that people
can have confidence in what they are being told about the state
of crime in this country."

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said
the figures revealed the extent to which gun crime is a "scar on
society".

"It is shocking that the Home Office is in denial about the extent
of gun crime by refusing to include offences where a gun is
present but not brandished," he said.

"This is another strong reason why the Home Office should not be
in charge of collecting its own statistics, which should be put
directly under the responsibility of the Office for National
Statistics.

"Gun crime must be treated with the same seriousness and
concern as knife crime. Both are a scar on our society."

In all, there were at least 5,612 offences excluded from the Home
Office's official gun crime total last year, according to figures
supplied by police forces.

The true total number of excluded offences will have been even
higher, because two of the 43 forces in England and Wales,
Thames Valley and Leicestershire, failed to hand over their data
when asked to do so under the Freedom of Information Act, and a
large urban force, Greater Manchester, provided incomplete
statistics. Scotland records gun crime differently.

When the Home Office publishes its latest quarterly crime figures
on Thursday, they will include a section on gun crime injuries and
deaths, but the figures will again exclude a significant number of
incidents.

The Sunday Telegraph's figures suggest that the Metropolitan
Police's official tally of 3,300 gun crimes in 2006/7, the most
recent available, would have risen to around 5,000 if excluded
categories had been counted. In 2007, Met officers dealt with
1,678 firearms incidents which were not included in the official
tally. The Met's figures show that offences of firearms possession
in the capital rose from 850 five years ago to 1,400 last year.

After the Met, the second-highest number of offences excluded
from the official statistics was recorded by West Midlands Police
with 404, taking the force's true annual total of gun crimes to
around 1,400.

Richard Garside, director of the Centre for Crime and Justice
Studies at King's College London, said: "We welcome this
research. Effective policy-making needs to be informed by the
best information available.

"Firearms offences are comparatively rare in Britain, and the vast
majority thankfully do not result in a serious or fatal injury. But if
the police already collect this information it is difficult to
understand why it should not be put routinely into the public
domain."

The Home Office crime figures document states: "Firearms are
taken to be involved in a crime if they are fired, used as a blunt
instrument against a person, or used as a threat."

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "Gun crime figures have only
ever included offences involving the use of a firearm. These
counting rules for these figures were drawn up by the Home
Office in conjunction with police."

She added: "There are five offences which are not included in
the firearm statistics, and which can be tried for in the courts."

The Sunday Telegraph also recently revealed that knife crime
figures were at least two-thirds higher than official figures.

Police statistics showed forces in England and Wales are on course
to record 38,000 serious knife crimes this year, or more than 100
a day, compared with last year's official total of 22,151 offences,
a figure announced by the Home Office in July in its first annual
count of knife crimes.