Leading article: The trend is definitely down

There is no cause for complacency or self-congratulation about the fall in crime figures. Crime has not disappeared, it's just dropped. A fall of seven per cent in 2009 is certainly good news but we don't need the parties to start scoring points about it in the election or battling over which one deserves most credit.

Labour will inevitably insist that the trend is entirely down to Government policies and – credit where credit's due – increases in police numbers have obviously helped. But it's important to bear in mind that crime started dropping in the mid-Nineties, before Labour's watch started, while crime rates have fallen in most developed countries over much the same period, in the United States above all. What we're experiencing here in Britain appears to be part of a trend in Western society, which probably reflects changing demographics as much as measures undertaken by any governments. Ageing societies produce less crime.

The downward trend does not match the Tory image of "broken Britain", meanwhile. With no sign of the recession pushing up crime, or pushing crime up the campaign agenda, the Tories must welcome the fall through what one suspects are gritted teeth. David Cameron's team has to be careful to strike a constructive note, rather than sounding secretly peeved by the loss of a dog-whistle issue for them.

If crime – though not sexual crimes, we should note – is indeed going down, it is to be hoped that a more imaginative debate about our prisons might ensue, chiefly about why they are so full and why we keep sending so many people there. For all the hue and cry about liberal judges letting criminals off with derisory punishments, we still send a greater proportion of our criminals to serve custodial sentences than do our European neighbours, which is a costly way of going about dispensing justice.

Freed from the pressures created by the fact – or mere perception – of "soaring crime", it might be reasonable to expect a more considered approach to the whole question of locking people up. Would that all main parties could agree on fruitful approaches to explore. A little consensus on an issue of concern to everybody – now that would certainly raise the stock of Britain's political class from its currently low state.