Crime 'costs each Londoner �400'

The cost of each crime includes court costs and security measures

Crime cost Londoners �3bn last year - the equivalent of �400 per resident, the TaxPayers' Alliance has said.

Using Home Office and police data it calculated that crime cost the most per person for people living in central London's Westminster, at �620 each.

A spokesman for the campaign group said police urgently needed to "replicate radical reductions in crime" seen in cities such as New York.

The Met police and Metropolitan Police Authority declined to comment.

The TaxPayers' Alliance multiplied police statistics on recorded crime in 2007 with Home Office estimates on the economic and social cost of each crime.

This included the cost to the criminal justice system resulting from each crime, plus security measures, physical and emotional costs.

The campaign group then divided this total cost by the number of residents in each borough. So the �154m cost of crime in Westminster was divided by its population of 249,600, for example.

COST OF CRIME IN LONDON Westminster �620 per person Islington �590 Tower Hamlets �556 Hackney �537 Southwark �529 Lambeth �524 Lewisham �521 Camden �501 Newham �483 Hammersmith & Fulham �476 Source: Tax Payers' Alliance

After Westminster, the borough with the second highest cost of crime was in Islington, north London, followed by Tower Hamlets in east London.

Richmond-upon-Thames in south-west London, had the lowest cost of crime per resident, at �215.

TaxPayers' Alliance policy analyst Matthew Sinclair said: "Ordinary Londoners, particularly those in the poorest boroughs, pay the price for high crime rates every day.

"Whether we have been victims of crime, are afraid to go out at night or are just paying ever more to protect and insure ourselves, crime has big economic, emotional and human costs for us all."

The campaign group called for police to tackle low level crime more effectively, to cut bureaucracy and produce more detailed crime statistics.

The Met is currently responsible to both London's mayor and the Home Office, but the group called for the mayor to take sole responsibility.

"The lack of a single source of clear leadership could easily lead to a lack of strategic direction," a TaxPayers' Alliance spokesman said.

Last year the Home Office estimated that sexual offences incurred the highest average economic and social cost, at �33,908 per offence. Theft from a shop incurred the lowest cost, at �117.

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