Violence resembling the U.S. television crime series “The Wire” has become the norm in British cities, Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling says.

“It’s the world of the drama series ‘The Wire’ — a series that tracks the nightmare of drugs, gangs and organised crime in inner city west Baltimore.  It’s a horrendous portrayal of the collapse of civilised life and of human despair.”

The Home Office refutes Grayling’s claim that violent crime has risen 70 percent since Labour came to power in 1997.  The British Crime Survey, which is the best indicator of longer-term trends in crime shows a 41 percent decrease in incidents of violence since 1997,” said spokesman Simon Barrett.

Who’s right? Is it right to suggest that British cities reflect the gritty streets of Baltimore, Maryland?

American cities have been known for years for their off-limit pockets controlled by gun-wielding inner city gang members involved with drug-related crime.

Are we really getting that bad, or are the Conservatives just trying to score quick political points?

Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson has recommended that the government should sharply raise the price of alcohol  to try to combat Britain’s chronic drinking problem.

His annual report calls for a minimum price of 50 pence per unit of alcohol sold, which would nearly double the price of some discount beer and wine. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have also shown interest in minimum pricing.

But the government is under no obligation to accept any such recommendation and is aware of the unpopularity of raising alcohol prices in a recession and not so far away from a general election.

Gordon Brown rejected the proposal outright.

The Conservatives say it is important to deal with people’s attitudes to drinking, not just supply and price, while the Liberal Democrats support putting an end to “pocket-money priced” alcohol.

What do you think? Does price play much of a part in Britain’s binge-drinking culture?

The charity Barnardo’s has released a poll showing over half the country thinks children are beginning to behave like animals.

Forty-nine percent of 2,021 people surveyed thought children now pose more of a danger to their peers and to adults with 43 percent saying something has to be done to protect them from youngsters.

Fifty-four percent thought children are beginning to behave like animals and 45 percent agreed that people refer to kids as “feral” because they behave that way.

Barnardo’s Chief Executive Martin Narey says it is appalling that people think that way.

What do you think?

A colleague tells me of a quick way to make cash for anyone who wants to. His neighbours discovered a pile of old taps and central heating pipes they had lying around had more value than they thought. A scrap metal merchant gave them £75 for them. ”It’s a bubble,” the merchant said.

It may be a bubble, but it’s proving a lasting one and one that’s causing problems in unexpected quarters too. In my salubrious part of Surrey, local churches are struggling to keep their roofs on and it’s not because of the volume of their congregations’ singing either. Thieves are stripping lead roofing and flashing to melt down and sell on.

It’s become a multi-million-pound problem across the country. Police have urged residents to call them if they ever see someone climbing on church roofs. And the churches themselves have decided they can’t afford to turn the other cheek. They’ve tried stake-outs and security patrols. Now, some are investing in special coatings that leave a unique lasting chemical impression on anyone who comes into contact with them.

It doesn’t solve the crime immediately, the police still have to find and arrest suspects for that to happen. But it’s a hefty deterrent - if they catch anyone climbing on roof tops they can carry out a quick check to discover if they have any traces of the chemical on them - if they do they can then be linked to specific offences and prosecuted.

There’s a line in the Old Testament of the Bible where Moses warns the Israelites, “Be sure, your sins will find you out.” I’m not sure he had this kind of technology in mind. But perhaps churches ought to be putting it on warning signs.

Ever wanted to know how many crimes were committed in your local area?

Well, by the end of the year you’ll be able to get some idea with every police force required to produce online interactive “crime maps”.

West Midlands and West Yorkshire are two of the forces who have put information about the number of offences in different neighbourhoods on their Web sites and on Wednesday the country’s biggest force, London’s Metropolitan Police, activated its crime mapping site.

The government believes that the maps will help alleviate public perceptions about crime, revealing that the number of actual offences is far lower than many people fear.

“By rolling out up-to-date, interactive crime maps, we can better inform people about crime problems in their area, and enable them to have much more of a say in what their local police focus on,” said Home Secretary Jacqui Smith last month.

“The latest annual crime figures showed another drop in crime nationwide but it’s important that people understand what this means to them in their local area and where challenges remain.”

New London Mayor Boris Johnson, who made providing the maps a key manifesto commitment, said it gave people the chance to see how their local police were performing.

‘This new online service means that Londoners will, at long last, be able to get information about crime levels in their neighbourhood at the click of a button,” Johnson said.

But how much use are they? The Met’s maps currently only provide details of burglaries, robberies and vehicle crime. The Police Federation, the body that represents rank and file officers, said the maps are not going to help and could even give criminals an idea of where the police are vulnerable.

Criminologists also argue that the data can be misleading as areas with high crime often have low reporting rates.

Looking up the crime statistics for my “sub ward” of London, I discovered the number of crimes fell from 6 to 5 last month, with my area given an “average” crime rating. And to be honest, I don’t know whether that should make me feel relieved, or worried.

Should Justice Secretary Jack Straw press ahead with plans to build three massive “Titan” jails housing up to 2,500 inmates each?

An alliance of 34 criminal justice charities and associations have written an open letter to Straw urging him to scrap the plans, arguing they will do nothing to reduce crime or tackle “sky-high” reoffending rates.

Prisons Minster James Hanson says in a consultation document the supersized Titan prisons will “ensure that we can respond to the needs of different offenders whilst capturing the best of what we do and the economies of scale available to us.”

But Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers disagrees, describing Titans as “flying in the face of our and others’ evidence that smaller prisons work better than large ones.”

“They may be more efficient, but at the cost of being less effective” she says in her latest annual report.

Many jails today have as few as 200 places, while the largest — Wandsworth in London — has 1,500.

It’s not only special interest groups who are complaining.

The Conservatives also say smaller is better — both in schools and in jails — and note that the planned 60 acre size for the Titan prisons means that each would cover an area twice the size of Wembley Stadium.

Life peer Lord Carter, who came up with the idea of the Titan jails, told me in an interview last year they are designed to achieve supermarket efficiencies, saying they would be the equivalent of five 500-place prisons but with “shared services, like the gate and the catering.”

However, it appears the Titans won’t eradicate the problem of inmates doubling up in cells — the government’s own consultation document talks about achieving their 2,500 prisoner target by “planned overcrowding” from their basic 2,100 inmate capacity.

People often don’t care what happens to prisoners as long as they are locked up.

But should the government ignore the advice of the criminal justice charities who say the plans will “cement this country’s position as the prison capital of western Europe”?

Whose DNA is it anyway?

A “citizens’ inquiry” instigated by the Human Genetics Commission, a government advisory body, wants the records of people who have not been convicted, or whose convictions are long spent, to be deleted from the forensic National DNA Database and says the whole archive should be overseen by an independent body.

The database was established in 1995 in Britain - the country where scientists first pioneered the technique of DNA fingerprinting.

It now contains genetic profiles on more than 4 million people, representing the highest proportion of any population on a forensic DNA database in the world, at over 6 percent.

A future government might misuse the information, members of the inquiry fear. One  says keeping all the DNA records would be the first step towards a totalitarian state.

Police, though, find the database a boon, especially in trying to solve ”cold” cases from the past.

What do you think? Is the database becoming too big?

(This blog was updated on July 17 to include the latest crime figures. First posted May 14)

**For full coverage of crime in Britain click here **

It’s easy to speak of an epidemic amid the many headlines of stabbings in London. But the Metropolitan police, which has made tackling knife crime its top priority said on Friday despite more than 50 fatal stabbings so far this year London has an “issue with knives” rather than suffering from an epidemic.

To combat the “issue”, police have searched 27,000 people, arrested more than 1,200 and seized 500 knives in London during their six-week “Operation Blunt 2″ campaign.

Figures from the government’s British Crime Survey show there were 22,151 serious offences involving knives in England and Wales in the 12 months to March 2008, although overall crime fell significantly.

Politicians have called for tougher laws to deal with knife crime. Opposition leader David Cameron wants anyone caught carrying a knife to be jailed. Cameron’s custodial sentence demand goes one step further than Prime Minister Gordon Brown who said last month there should be a presumption to prosecute those aged 16 and 17 caught with a knife, rather than merely cautioning them.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says that those convicted of carrying knives would be made to visit hospital emergency wards in attempt to confront them with the reality of stab wounds.

But tougher penalties don’t chime necessarily with those who have been affected by knife crime. “I was 16 eight years ago and it wasn’t like that then,” says Brooke Kinsella , a former “EastEnders” actress whose brother Ben was stabbed to death last month. Politicians “don’t know what’s going on. It’s the people that live in their local communities that know and hear about these attacks every day,” she told an interviewer.

But what can be done when barely a week goes by now without news that another teenager has died on Britain’s streets, their killers armed with guns or knives?

Sometimes the victim was targeted because of gang rivalry. Often it was an argument that simply got out of hand. Or, as in the case of 16-year-old Jimmy Mizen, murdered in a London baker’s shop, it was simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Since the issue of youth violence became prominent last year, following the fatal shooting of 11-year-old schoolboy Rhys Jones, there have been many promises of action from politicians. But, if anything, the situation seems to be getting worse.

More police, tougher sentencing, better facilities for young people, and targeting vulnerable families have all been suggested as remedies.

What do you think is needed to stop the bloodshed?

Christian pub landlords John and Krista Fleming have been sacked after their attempts to ban swearing and gambling on horse races drove customers away in such large numbers that takings plummeted.

Regulars at the King’s Head in Islington, north London, complained that they were excessive in their Christian zeal. “They should have had pews in there, not chairs,” said one.

The Flemings however said all they were trying to do was to stop people swearing at the top of their voices at the bar and intimidating other customers. Arsenal supporters were among the main culprits apparently (!).

What do you think? Now that smoking is banned in pubs, was it a step too far to try and push the “F” word out of the door as well?

Or was this a brave — if hopeless — stand against the bellowing yobs who seem to be a permanent feature at the bar of so many of our pubs?

Imperial College withdrew its offer of a place to study medicine to an 18-year-old when it found out he had been convicted of burglary three years ago.

Majid Ahmed won the place after turning his life around and achieving straight A grades at A level. The conviction was spent but he had to disclose it for a criminal records check for Imperial.

The decision, which comes as the government is considering a new strategy to encourage elite universities to take more students from less wealthy backgrounds, has been widely criticised. Ahmed should not have to bear the consequences of a youthful indiscretion for life and should have been given the chance to fulfil his ambition to become a doctor, critics say. 

Imperial College says it was right to bar him and that decision had been made to uphold trust in the medical profession.

What is your opinion? Is Imperial being too harsh?