I've noticed over the course of this year the media haven't been making such a big deal over crime levels in the UK, unlike previously there was endless coverage over violent crime in particular, especially in the major cities.
I know the Covid pandemic has obviously had a significant impact on crime levels, especially during the first lockdown back in the spring, but surely they must have been creeping steadily upwards once again since the summer, but there barely seems to have been a dickie bird about it on the BBC website, nor any others AFAIK.
I do think the media in general have a cyclical tendency to flip-flop every 3-4 years or so between the big issues such as crime, terrorism, the economy, etc and recycle the same old moral panics pertaining to all of those issues.
I recall, for example, between 2008 and 2012 the media seemed to be less focused on terror threats and (obviously) more focused on the state of the economy, then from 2013, following the Lee Rigby incident in Woolwich in the summer of that year and the birth of ISIS, coupled with the likes of the EDL and Britain First being at the height of their activities, and numerous attacks on mosques throughout the UK, terror threats instantly became a recurring moral panic for the first time since around 2007-08, coming to a head in 2017 with a series of attacks in London and Manchester, then suddenly receiving less media attention from 2018 onwards.
Recurring panics about crime, especially violence and teenage yob culture have kind of overlapped over the same time period since 2008, lessening between 2011 and 2015, then recurring again between about 2016 and the start of this year (2020), and inevitably panics about the economy are now recurring once again.