I’m unsure as to why this is surprising? When the cost of living increases and people struggle just to survive, they turn to crime. Governments need to stop obsessing over maintaining the short-term status quo and focus on long-term investment that will ensure things like this are a lot harder in the future.
Yup. And the problem is, once the perception of law and order is shattered, it takes a disproportionate amount of effort to build it again.
Tories cut police by over 20,000, then forced the remaining officers into splitting their duties across normal police work and admin/office work. This also happened alongside cuts to the legal system.
Over time, crime ramped up as people realised they can get away with it, to the point now where plenty of crimes are defacto legalised.
Even if you bring back those jobs lost (and more, to adjust for the population being 10% higher than it was in 2011), it wouldn’t be enough, because a part of why the crime rate back then was lower was due to the perception you’d be caught even if you in fact may not have been.
Now police have to overcome perception that you won’t be arrested for committing crimes rather than have perception work with them. Fixing it will cost a lot more than we saved by gutting the police and legal systems.