AAA White Paper The political economy of informal events, 2030 | Page 96

public view, making opportunist crimes less attractive to those who
perpetrate them.
Overall, the evidence suggesting that the informal events season
really raises the level of crime is sketchy at best.
First, there is more life outdoors in summer, and days are
longer then. That presents more opportunities for crime – not just at
informal events, but in general. The salience of July in the statistics
lends credence this point, just as, for criminal damage and arson,
the salience of October may say something about more of these deeds
being done under cover of darkness.
Second, we need to remember once again that we are here
discussing recorded crime. The overall rising trends shown in Chart 21
may relate not just to a rising incidence of crime, but also to a growing
proclivity, not just on the part of the public to report it, but also on the
part of the police to record it. The rise of easy-to-use online methods
of reporting and recording may also be a factor here.
Third, precisely what constitutes a crime, both in the public mind
and in law, changes over time. The overall decline in ASB is striking,
and could well reflect changing attitudes to the category. On the other
hand, how do we explain the perceptible rise in public order offences?
We might be baffled, given the relative absence of serious riots, strikes
and other disturbances in the past five years, at that rise; but we do
need to recall that sections 4 and 5 of the Public Order Act concern
not just the perpetrator’s intent to cause fear and provocation, but also
the victim’s feelings of alarm and distress. Once we recall that, it’s
clear that a growing public willingness and IT-assisted ability to make
reports of offensive behaviour, hate crimes and abuse have probably
brought about much of the rise in recorded public order offences.
Last, we need to do the maths around what's happening with
outdoor informal events on the ground. Chart 1 in this White Paper
highlighted Britain’s tendency to hold a growing number of festivals.
Attendee numbers at today’s festivals are also bigger than ever.
Therefore to trace a link between outdoor informal events and rising
levels of crime, one must also factor in a widening popularity for those
events, making the actual incidence of crime per head at them a more
modest, if still regrettable, phenomenon.
In sum, it’s impossible to strip out a distinctive ‘festival effect’
operating to increase crime in England and Wales. This applies both to
general trends in different kinds of crime, and to the seasonal effect.
There is simply too much white noise around the data for anyone to
quantify the precise impact of outdoor informal events upon crime.
In England and Wales between 2014 and 2018, specific types of
recorded crime curved upward, and especially between May and
July. But that pattern can barely be correlated with festivals, let
alone be said to have been caused by them.
To investigate further, we now examine a fairly arbitrary selection
of six informal outdoor festivals held in England in 2018. We compare
the recorded incidence of ASB occurring (1) within a quarter-mile
radius of the postcode in which each event are held, with (2) that
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