By Danny Shaw BBC's Home Affairs correspondent

The government launched a plan to cut street crime last year

As the latest crime figures show a fall in numbers for England and Wales - according to the British Crime Survey - the BBC's Danny Shaw wonders whether the public are really convinced.

Another day, another set of crime figures.

Under David Blunkett, the Home Office has begun publishing the statistics more often then ever before - once every three months.

Ministers say it is in the interests of openness.

Most positive

Cynics say it is because crime is generally falling - the more positive press releases they can issue, the better.

The truth is somewhere in between.

There is more research into crime trends, so there is more to reveal.

But equally, the findings are pretty favourable for the government, so there is no point in keeping them under wraps.

In fact, the latest batch of data is the most positive for some time.

People, fed a diet of murders, muggings and rapes in newspapers and on television, are left with the impression that crime is rocketing Crime falls by 9% in 2002

When figures compiled by police forces were adjusted to reflect new counting methods, they show that from October to December last year, crime fell by 7%, compared to the same period in 2001.

Measures on street crime helped cut robberies by almost a quarter - though the figure had been extremely high previously.

It was all something of a surprise - earlier last year, crime appeared to be rising again after almost a decade of decline.

In a separate set of figures, the British Crime Survey, based on interviews with 28,000 adults, also confirms that the downward trend in crime is continuing.

Fall in burglaries

According to the survey, crime fell by 9% last year, and the risk of being a victim of crime is the lowest it has been for 22 years.

What has driven crime downwards has been a massive fall in burglaries - and most recently car thefts.

You are almost half as likely now to have your car broken into or stolen as you were eight years ago.

Yet, though the public's fear of burglary and car crime is lower than it was, people's perceptions of overall crime remain out of kilter with the figures.

And that is what is most worrying for the Government.

When people in the survey were asked whether crime had gone up in the last two years, 71% said they thought it had.

Just a year ago, that figure was 56 %.

Reliable figures?

There are two explanations for this. Either the crime figures are just not reflecting the reality, or people's view of reality is being distorted by other influences, like media coverage of crime.

I tend to think the crime figures are probably more reliable than ever - once you can see through the spin.

That leaves one possibility: that people, fed a diet of murders, muggings and rapes in newspapers and on television, are left with the impression that crime is rocketing.

It is not. The other significant finding from the British Crime Survey is that people are more fearful of anti-social behaviour than they used to be.

One-third of those questioned said they were concerned about the problem of teenagers hanging around the streets in their area, an increase on the previous year.

Worries about other kinds of disorder were also up slightly.

All this explains why the Government is pushing through new legislation to tackle unruly children, noisy neighbours, yobs and vandals.