The seasons are changing and winter is steadily approaching. It’s quite mild at the moment, but it is getting dark much earlier.
The other night, I was walking back to the BBB around 6-7pm. It was dark. Not twilight or half-light, but properly dark.
I had been into town and was coming back home, walking past shops, past houses, past a marina, a school, through a very small cemetery and then through parkland to the boat. It’s a 20-minute walk, not too far and quite an interesting walk.
I passed the usual range of dog walkers and mad squirrels before I got to the parkland near the boat. There are streetlights, but they are very widely spaced apart and on bends, leaving the part I was walking in complete darkness.
As I was walking I noticed a shadow in the darkness. I moved to one side to be sure I was out of the way of whatever it was. It wasn’t a person, a person with a dog or a cyclist. As the shape got nearer I realized it was a person walking two big dogs. A German Shepard and a Japanese Akita, I think.
The dogs were lovely (I like dogs, I was a dog walker before we moved to the boat and often say hello to random dogs) and I made a fuss of them and said hello to the owner. The owner said “It’s a bit late to be out on your own, isn’t it?”. It was not late, between 6 and 7pm! I didn’t respond, just said goodbye and continued my walk.
That started me thinking. Why can’t I walk outside after dark? In the parkland, there is a high chance that I might fall in a rabbit hole or trip over a bench, but that was not what he meant. He was talking about personal safety.
What he was inferring was that I can’t be out after dark because other people don’t know how to behave.
Think about that again.
I can’t go out after dark because other people don’t know how to behave.
That hardly seems fair, does it?
I don’t have a problem with walking after dark. I know a lot of women who do, but I don’t. A torch is useful (and my phone has one built in) so I can see when it’s very dark and the ground is uneven. Other than that, as far as I am concerned, walking in the dark is the same as walking in the daylight. But without the sun. I know that there are some nasty crimes that happen, and I have no desire to become involved in one, but I try not to let that affect my behaviour.
I imagine that there are more violent crimes after dark, because violence often goes hand in hand with alcohol, and more people drink in the evening than during the day. And I imagine that sexual offences are maybe more common after dark than in daylight, because there is less risk of the perpetrator being caught in the dark.
But that is just my imagination. I would like to deal with facts. So I have been researching, and the results surprised me.
I have been searching violent and sexual crime statistics through the Office of National Statistics.
The majority of violent crimes were crimes without injury perpetrated by someone already known to the victim. 2/5ths were committed during the day, 3/5ths at night. It is slightly more dangerous at night in terms of violent crime, but not a lot.
Sexual crimes are often underreported, so the results are harder to rely on. The Office of National Statistics have used the Police figures as well as the Crime Survey for England and Wales, and this is the best data we have.
87 out of 100 sexual crimes were committed by someone the victim already knew. That is the vast majority. And just over one twentieth of a percent of the entire population has been subjected to rape by a stranger. That is enough people to fill Brixton O2 Academy, with quite a bit of elbow room!
It seems to me that both violent crime and sexual crime committed by a stranger are very rare. I don’t think that the fear of something so unlikely should change my behaviour. I would be reacting to fear, and not facts.
The chap that suggested that I shouldn’t be out after dark, made me feel quite threatened. I’m sure that wasn’t his intention, but I started wondering whether he was being threatening. Maybe he knew that I shouldn’t be out after dark…
That made me quite cross. I was cross with myself for reacting to someone else in that way. If I find something scary, I can choose how to react to that fear. But I shouldn’t alter my mindset or actions because of someone else.
So I am going to carry on as I was. Being careful not to fall in the river or trip over a hole, avoiding people who look drunk, and going where I choose when I choose. That is the privilege of being an adult and I don’t intend to lose it.