Has sexual assault or violent crime gone down at least?

[pinkhappy]

In a desperate attempt to see the bright side, does anyone know if sexual assault has gone down since March 2020? Clearly rape within relationships won’t be helped but maybe date rape is rarer just because dates are rarer?

Possibly but it will increase once society opens up again. Also domestic abuse is now through the roof so I’m failing to be optimistic about what you’ve just wrote tbh. I wouldn’t even want to imagine the horrors some families are currently living in with access to no support.

On domestic abuse, the official report is a little ambivalent about whether covid restrictions have caused an increase

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/domesticabuseduringthecoronaviruscovid19pandemicenglandandwales/november2020

Although it doesn’t paint a pretty picture.

Possibly but it will increase once society opens up again.

I am sure it will. But if there are women who have been saved from this horror in the last 12 months that is still a good thing.

Now on a first date the only places to go are socially distanced walk, his house or your house......People are lonely and desperate for human company. What do you imagine that does for date rape rates? Everything is closed. There is nothing to do but drink and take drugs all day. What do you imagine that does for violent crime rates? Do you imagine that its more or less likely that teenagers who are not being educated will fall into gangs and drug dealing now there is an increased demand for drugs?

The only positive of lockdown is that lockdown lovers enjoy it. The rest of society is suffering.

Less opportunities to have your drink spiked.

Also less witnesses.

A PCSO I know warned her uni-age daughter not to go to the supermarket after dark to avoid the queues in the first lockdown. Reason being that with the streets empty, a predator has a much greater chance of getting you without risk of a witness intervening.

I honestly don't think it will have improved anything. Our police force have been diverted elsewhere and violent and sexually violent people will not stop, they will just Adapt new ways and methods. Add to that the appalling domestic violence rates (and that spousal rape goes un-prosecuted the majority of the time) and I think sexual and violent crimes will have gone up over all.

Then there are the other social impacts, drug addiction, mental health, suicide, isolation, alcoholism. Every generation is having an impact from the youngest to the oldest. It's a horribly bleak picture. I am not anti-lockdown, I understand why we had to have the restrictions we have had, but I do think there are ways the response could have been managed better. That this pandemic hit after years of ideological austerity has made it worse, for instance.

We have a depressed, overweight, struggling workforce, and then we've added Brexit. Then the pandemic has Hit. This is going to be a decade that we are recovering from for many many years. I have been trying to find a silver lining but it's a horribly dark cloud.