However, it’s also something that The Man On The Clapham Omnibus needn’t fear and isn’t indicative of the UK as a whole, or even working-class inner London, becoming a lawless society where you’re as likely to get stabbed as not, which is the tone of the media coverage, pretty much all right-wing commentary, and far too much left/liberal commentary on the issue.

Re the comment in question – yes, you’re right that it’s not necessarily wrong, in that the commenter could be a young black male on an estate in Peckham, but I’d be bloody surprised if it were right – whenever I’ve seen people who rant on the Internet about crime being out of control disclose where they live, the vast majority tend to live in much leafier, less gangland-y places than me (and where I live, although unleafy and inner London-y, really isn’t very gangland-y at all).

On this particular topic (violent crime rates), I expect the main problem is that which Chris Dillow (Link) expounded on yesterday. Specifically, risk of becoming a victim of crime is very unequally distributed geographically, meaning that violent crime may be down across the country as a whole, but it may well be up by a similar percentage in the local area that your commenter lives in.

The statistics aren’t necessarily wrong, but neither is Sisong necessarily wrong. There may be a lot of violent crime going on around them that doesn’t show up in the aggregate statistics.