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Good Morning This week’s Crime Survey of England and Wales hardly makes for comfortable reading. The statistics show not only a growing volume of crime but also a worrying rise in violent crime. It’s obvious that the nature of criminal activity is also changing. One of the reasons the ��ѿ��ý has decommissioned its long running Crimewatch programme is explained by one of its founding presenters Nick Ross as because “the world has changed beneath its feet”. Criminologists now analyse abuse, laundering and fraud, increasingly hidden away, online, without traditional boundaries. And I’m not at all sure that we’re fully aware of the additional pressures all this places on police forces across the country. The Chief Constable of Norfolk Police, Simon Bailey, talked this week of reassessing priorities at “a critical time when the police service is facing unparalleled growth in complex crime.” And yet, none of this changes the underlying expectation of the majority in society that the rule of law still needs to be upheld. Victims of crime are still victims of crime. Perpetrators still need to be brought to justice. The challenge may well be more complex, but it has, nevertheless, to be faced. I first read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic Crime and Punishment as a teenager,. But I don’t think I fully grasped the extent to which the orthodox New Testament understanding of dealing with right and wrong, according to our own individual conscience and experience, as well as in the eyes of God, undergirds this extremely dark novel. The battle here, in dealing with the actual consequences of criminal behaviour, overtly reflects Jesus’ teaching that the Kingdom of God is only to be experienced [or will only be established] where we choose to exercise our God-given freedom responsibly. The New Testament scholar Jimmy Dunn acknowledges that, what he describes as being free to make the right choices inevitably involves dealing with “our several and continuing weaknesses and vulnerabilities”. The world may be changing beneath us. An unparalleled growth in complex crime represents a wake-up call to us all. But our freedom to teach our children well, to act responsibly ourselves and our accepted duty to deal with those who don’t, represents not only an ever- changing practical challenge – but a moral and spiritual one as well.