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Changes suggested to Dangerous Dogs Act: Home Secretary speech on crime and anti-social behaviour; ENGLAND: London: Westminster: INTAlan Johnson MP (Home Secretary) speech SOT - Before moving on to what is happening in our country in respect of crime and antisocial behaviour, I want to talk about what isn’t happening. - The Economist magazine recently exposed the conceit behind the Conservatives’ “Broken Britain” mantra. Whether the measure is unemployment, poverty, teenage pregnancies, poor educational outcomes, long hospital waiting lists, compared to the 80s and 90s, the Britain we are living in could more accurately be described as “mended” rather than “broken.” - But the Conservatives realise that it is on crime and disorder that the accusation stands or falls; thus David Cameron’s latest attempt to mislead the public came in the wake of the terrible attacks on two young boys in Edlington. This was an horrific event – even more so because of the age of the perpetrators. If such cases were commonplace, they would indeed paint a lurid and depressing picture of life in the UK. But they are not. The shock value was amplified by its rarity and such tragedies are far from indicative of some kind of irreversible social decay. As Professor Colin Pritchard’s enlightening analysis of child homicides since the 1970s shows, the UK was once the third biggest killer of children in the developed world – it now thankfully languishes near the bottom of the table, with incidents down by 70 per cent. The principal reason which Professor Pritchard gave for this striking transformation is the closer co-operation between police, social workers and other agencies, which although far from perfect, has improved dramatically over the last few decades. - For the vast majority of people, life is undoubtedly safer than it was 13 years ago. Since 1997, according to the British Crime Survey, crime has dropped by over a third. Burglary is down by 5...