My Two Credits:
I dig the...lively debate...around defining 'senseless', but let's just call it an uptick in unprovoked, non-consensual PvP. Which is generally just called piracy.
I've seen an uptick in threads about it, but without any data it's hard to measure. One of my favorite features in EVE Online is also quite simple: the galactic map displays many statistics including ship traffic and ships destroyed in the last 24 hours. Really handy if you're looking for fights...or trying to avoid them. Anyways...
If there IS an increase in piracy - and we did argue that may be problematic - I'd say it is likely because the game lacks outlets for controlled or incented PvP. Power Play PvP is a joke, for example, but if tuned correctly could provide an excellent outlet for PvP oriented commanders. CQC is also broken, another feature for PvP commanders.
That said, it's important to remember that there will always be commanders who are PvP-oriented as a gankers, seeking soft-targets for various purposes ranging from the pleasure of triumphing over a target (regardless of its actual thread) or seeking goods or roleplaying a psychopath that targets unnamed ships because he or she thinks ships are people and deserve names to live.
The quantity of these gankers (and I don't use that term to be insulting, it's just another play style) is largely dependent on how the game supports or hinders their actions. The perception of these gankers is dependent on the quantity of targets available. i.e. If more commanders move to solo or pg, gankers will seem more prevalent simply because the pool of targets is smaller - increasing the percentile affected by their actions. Vice versa, while there are literally hundreds of gankers in EVE Online - for which it is well known - your chances of being ganked are actually quite low, because the population available 'to be ganked' is generally quite high.
An instance of Elite doesn't support many players - even at popular stations such as Jameson - which means the ratio of gankers to targets is obscenely high. Gankers won't stay in the same instance with each other usually (out of fear for each other, or simply to have more targets to themselves, or any other reason really), so they tend to naturally spread across instances. Pirates are generally the same, but they are more likely to operate in packs - further unbalancing that ratio. Again, the limitations of instancing in Elite creates an environment that amplifies the presence of illegal activity.
If you were to organize a wing of anti-pirates - enforcers as I call them - you'd quickly run into a simple but frustrating problem: finding targets. If there are four of you, you've already eliminated 50% of the available pool of potential targets (not necessarily what you're looking for) just because of the limitations of the instance. A pirate - let alone a pirate group - will very likely not end up in your instance, you'll never meet, and they'll happily pillage away. But for the seven or so commanders in the instance with the pirate, his or her presence seems highly amplified when it isn't 'actually' that big of a deal relative to the total population.
Way, way off-topic...but consider the gun debate in the United States: if you eliminate Chicago, Detroit and Washington D.C. from gun crime statistics you also eliminate well over 75% of gun crime in the nation. Yet 75% of the population is obviously not in these cities. In the gaming environment, this same effect shows with piracy and ganking around major areas. Elite's spread-out nature where CGs and Jameson and Engineers are the sole focal points creates a perception of heightened illegal activity, when in fact it's just all concentrated in a few areas but still represents a tiny fraction of the total population.
Just some food for thought.