Lord Patten – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Patten on 2015-12-21.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the relationship between criminal offending and literacy levels.

Lord Bates

There is no single factor which explains crime. As the Home Secretary has said, the evidence suggests that there are six main drivers of crime: alcohol; drugs; the effectiveness of the Criminal Justice System; opportunity; profit; and character. Character, or an individual’s propensity to commit crime, appears to be influenced by a range of social and environmental influences as they grow up. However, the Home Office has made no specific assessment of the relationship between crime and literacy levels.

The most recent crime statistics published by the Office for National Statistics showed that overall crime fell by 8% in the year to June 2015, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales. Crime has now fallen by more than a quarter since June 2010, with just over 2.9 million fewer crimes a year.