A COUPLE of weeks ago, during the cool hours of darkness – at least after the return of the afternoon school bus – ‘person or persons unknown’ chose to make their way up my garden path, open the porch door, help themselves to a couple of coats and jackets, carry them back to the sea wall and throw them onto the beach to provide an improvised drinking/sleeping couch.

It was a bizarre adventure which, thanks to a beady-eyed neighbour, became another entry in a policeman’s notebook. Statistics never tell the whole story, of course. One more call attended, however trivial, contributes to the total of incidents reported or cleared up.

It’s certainly comforting to learn from our acting police chief that overall, crime levels in 2009 fell by six per cent from the previous year. But don’t all start celebrating at once – that’s ‘reported’ crime, not necessarily crime itself.

These days, many incidents pass with a shrug, possibly because individuals are not bothered or are scared of getting involved – which is an indictment of our society itself. Still, despite the current focus on violent crime in St Helier and the genuine concerns raised about walking the streets at night, Jersey is by all statistics (and more importantly, by general popular perception) a far safer environment to live and work in than most other areas of the UK.

It’s a highly emotive subject. We all like to feel safe in our beds or when going about our lawful business without fear of violence or hindrance. Those who remember the phenomenon also hanker for the presence of ‘bobbies on the street’ to deter the sort of visible law breaking and anti-social behaviour they believe has become endemic in our acquisitive, macho society. Have we generally become less principled and amoral? There’s certainly more ‘attitude’ about, and even if not strictly illegal, it can certainly appear threatening.

Not surprisingly, crime rates are also fertile territory for political point-scoring, particularly during election campaigns. It’s easy for those without responsibility to cast blame for what’s not being done, while those in charge of the figures have ‘home advantage’ over what they wish to include or leave out of what is published. So let’s not rule out manipulation, and even deliberate data misinterpretation.

While obviously the police cannot be held responsible for the rise in the number of crimes reported, they inevitably find themselves in the firing line when it comes to combating it, accused of being either heavy-handed or too lenient. At the same time it is rare to hear acknowledgement of the operational and political red tape they are forced to negotiate while carrying out their duties, or endorsement of their efforts to prevent even more entries in the crime stat tick-boxes. Furthermore, there are so many bewilderingly different ways that crime is recorded these days that, frankly, you take your choice.

There’s another contributing influence: media reporting. Figures make easy headlines. There was an adage that if you read or heard about a coach crash one day, you’d be bound to hear about three more the next. Currently, it’s knife crime, which is a genuine scourge. There are obviously too many youngsters carrying knives and even more being attacked. But in the unsentimental world of news reporting, where sensation rather than genuine concern is uppermost, it’ll be quickly displaced from the carousel by teenage drinking or drug taking as soon as there is some spectacular incident or death involved, or reputation to be trashed.

It’s worth asking whether we are just too hung up on crime figures and clear-up rates. Of course, it is everyone’s desire that trends should be reduced – call it a feelgood factor if you like, but maybe we should be more concerned with the ‘how’ than the ‘what’.

Fall victim to crime and, ipso facto, you become a statistic yourself. Apart from the medical profession, the police are probably the public service who come into contact with individuals when they are most raw and vulnerable. The experience is likely to have been horrible, and what really matters is the way you are dealt with, how the police officer has treated you as an individual in distressing circumstances.

So it’s much more than just a numbers game. The Khmer Rouge and Taliban were efficient in eliminating crime – they’d get top marks in the clear-up stakes – but their methodology doesn’t bear imagining.

So how should we really be judging law enforcement? Clearly it is vital that an institution which is both the bedrock of law-abiding society and the means of ensuring it should undergo scrutiny and assessment. But you only get what you pay for, and we’ve become accustomed to getting a considerably generous return.

We already know, because the statistics show it, that the States police force is 15 officers short, and budget cuts and staff shortages are likely to lead to vital areas such as crime prevention and walking the beat being sacrificed in order to fight violent and serious crime, drug offences and anti-social behaviour.

That is the unequivocal message from the current figures and, unless they are acted upon, all we can expect from the next set will be a depressingly familiar set of sterile pluses and minuses.

Sadly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we are presented with the same predictable statistics at year-end appraisal time, given the institutional obsession with snakes and ladders accounting. To be honest, they represent absolutely nothing unless they are used to improve operational effectiveness.

I wonder if 80% of the population will still reckon the service is doing a good job. If they don’t, it won’t be the fault of the last bobby standing!