Victims of violent crime have been dealt a “real insult” by figures showing that less than half of recorded cases last year were solved by police, the Conservatives said today.

The Government was lambasted by victims and police officers after official data supplied by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith showed that the detection rate for violent crime has plunged since the late 1990s to just 49 per cent in 2007/8. That meant that of almost one million recorded offences, 490,000 went unsolved.

A decade ago, almost three-quarters of violent crimes were solved.

The Home Office claimed that the drop was simply a result of reclassification, which meant that cases where no further action was taken could no longer count as “solved”.

However this is not true for all police forces, some of which still include "non-sanction detections" in their detection rates. This is where a case is not pursued for reasons such as the death of the offender or the refusal of the victim to give evidence.

The opposition, victims’ groups and rank and file police officers blamed the decrease on bureaucracy and a target culture which meant police were spending more time on paperwork than on the streets and were tempted to focus on solving minor crimes rather than serious violent ones.

Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: “It is bad enough that so much violent crime is being committed.

“It is a real insult to victims that over half of perpetrators are getting away with it.

He said: “This is a direct result of Labour’s target culture, which has incentivised the police to pursue minor crimes over serious violent ones, and the reams of red tape that tie officers to their desks when the public wants them out on the street.”

Violent offences range from wounding and assault through to murder. Sex attacks and robbery are not included in the category.

Lynn Costello of Mothers Against Murder and Aggression said the figures were “frightening.”

“Police are tied up in so much paperwork”, she said. “We have to put more officers on the streets.”

Critics spoke after the publication at the weekend of a leaked document in which the Home Office’s top civil servant admitted that serious violent crime had been allowed to rise due to a focus on targets.

In a 101-page briefing paper for new Home Office ministers last month, permanent secretary Sir David Normington suggested that because police had been given incentives to tackle less serious offences in a bid to reduce crime figures, they were less able to combat violent incidents.

The Government’s strategy would now focus on violent crime, he said.

Police officers also found themselves at odds with the Home Office as they claimed that staff were often encouraged to pursue minor crimes which were easy to solve in order to meet their targets. They have also complained of increasing bureaucracy, with figures released last month showing that on average, officers spent only eight minutes of every hour out on patrol.

"The public are right to be concerned," Simon Reed of the Police Federation said. "We must get our priorities right."

Targets were sending the message to officers that "common assault is the same as serious assault", he added.

But a Home Office spokeswoman insisted: “Overall crime is down by six per cent and fewer people are being injured as a result of violence.

“As demonstrated by the Policing Green Paper, we are always looking for new ways to further reduce bureaucracy - freeing up officers for frontline duties and building an even more efficient police service.

“The decline in the overall detection rate reflects a significant shift by many forces away from recording detections of crime where no further action is taken.”

The present rate could not be directly compared with the 71 per cent recorded a decade ago because of changes to the way crimes were recorded, the Home Office said.

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