ORDER AND LAW
There are few issues which raise more concern than the perceived increase in crime and anti-social behaviour.
There is no point in getting involved in a debate about crime statistics. Britain has far too much crime. In 1955 there were 500,000 crimes – in 2000 5 million.
We must regain control of our streets: “The essence of the police officer’s traditional role was to reinforce the informal control mechanisms of the neighbourhood itself.”
We must return to Sir Robert Peel’s principle of 'watch and ward' to prevent crime and restore order: The rights of the peace loving and orderly citizen must be paramount.
We must face certain facts:
1. We must restore full support for the family as the most important social control mechanism: 25% of all prisoners were in local authority care as children, compared with 2% of the general population. In other words, 23% of the prison sentences could be avoided if children were brought up by their family and not in homes.
For existing prisoners on release, it is essential to create a loving, caring environment on release, not the streets. This could be best addressed by a mentoring programme where all prisoners were released into the care of a family, their own or a volunteer and these mentors substantially supported financially.
Getting a job is the next most important matter. Tax incentive should be considered for firms that employ ex convicts with suitable mentoring in the work place. (Henry Ford did it a hundred years ago - he insisted that a certain percentage of the workforce were ex-convicts.)
Poorer people suffer from crime disproportionally: For example, in Lambeth there were 18,000 robberies in the four years up to 2003, while in Richmond there were 1,000. The breakdown of the community via immigration (though many tight immigrant communities are very lawful and above the British norm) vice, drugs, alcohol, joblessness, family breakdown, needs to be addressed
Police deployment needs to be radically changed and concentrated.
2. Maintenance of order has been neglected, not just concentrating on the legal process of reacting to crimes:
If low-level unruly conduct is not checked, it forms the seedbed for worse conduct. The unruly encroach further on the law abiding and petty offenders feel more powerful and more able to graduate to serious criminality. This is the ‘broken windows’ theory. Maintenance of order has been brought under legal restrictions appropriate to criminal suspects. The theory has become that if undesirable behaviour is not a crime then it must be permitted.
In this way a society becomes frightened and withdrawn.
Loud music, graffiti, rowdy children, beggars, gangs of teenagers on the street, shouting and swearing on the street, are often not crimes or extremely petty ones, but they invade the lawful citizen’s space and clear the streets of the law abiding.
The police must be encouraged to take back order on the streets and not be subject to inappropriate legal restrictions on this. A reasonable suspicion of possible disturbance of the peace should be a full defence for the police in taking action to remove persons from the street for failure to move on, disorderly behaviour, drunkenness, drinking in the street, etc.
Police commanders should be judged on effectiveness.
We will consider raising the age of alcohol consumption in public houses, etc. to 21, as in parts of the USA, to check the public drunkenness epidemic.
3. ASBO’s have a part to play: London Transport, according to Ken Livingstone’s newspaper. reports a major drop in illegal ticket touting and other offences by use of ASBO’s. We must say that this is a good idea. Curfews for teenagers and young adults will be considered and enforced.
4. The courts must not adjust their throughput to be in line with resources: On the contrary, trials have become extremely protracted with lower court judges fearful of being overturned on appeal. The judiciary must consider their own role in the cost, delays and complexity of the judicial system.
5. No one should leave the court premises after sentence without immediate payment of fines or by arranging payment, if necessary, via commercial bail bondsmen. Otherwise they must go straight to prison:
The scandal of writing off hundreds of millions in fines is totally demoralizing for the courts, the police and the law abiding.
6. Numbers of police.
In 1961 81,000 police officers had to deal with 807,000 crimes. In 2003 134,000 police officers had to deal with 5.8 million crimes. Moreover they are smothered by political correctness and form filling.
The police must robustly occupy and control the streets in areas of high crime. This means more police, less legal restrictions, no unpaid fines, and immediate court sentences by courts sitting all 24 hours. In New York there are 40,000 police; in London 30,000, for the same populations. But this is misleading. Much of the Met’s work is done in New York by federal agencies, FBI, special bureaux dealing with firearms, alcohol control, etc. In London the Met also has to provide a national policing service for a capital city, including the royal family, government and diplomatic security, specialist squads, etc. Moreover, New York does not face the ‘yobbish’ behaviour disfiguring entertainment areas. The London police force, therefore, needs to be approximately doubled but it must be efficiently deployed. Sir Ian Blair on 1/2/05 commented on the different resourcing of the police in New York and London but did not suggest any changes.
7. There also needs to be a change in public and media culture where disorderly conduct is not tolerated: Public violence and drunken behaviour is one example which disfigures and disgraces our country, but which is still given ‘nod and wink’ approval in the more mindless areas of TV and other media outlets.
[I acknowledge the help of the Civitas publication ‘Cultures and Crimes’ by Norman Dennis and George Erdos]
FUTURUS/2 February 2005
There is no point in getting involved in a debate about crime statistics. Britain has far too much crime. In 1955 there were 500,000 crimes – in 2000 5 million.
We must regain control of our streets: “The essence of the police officer’s traditional role was to reinforce the informal control mechanisms of the neighbourhood itself.”
We must return to Sir Robert Peel’s principle of 'watch and ward' to prevent crime and restore order: The rights of the peace loving and orderly citizen must be paramount.
We must face certain facts:
1. We must restore full support for the family as the most important social control mechanism: 25% of all prisoners were in local authority care as children, compared with 2% of the general population. In other words, 23% of the prison sentences could be avoided if children were brought up by their family and not in homes.
For existing prisoners on release, it is essential to create a loving, caring environment on release, not the streets. This could be best addressed by a mentoring programme where all prisoners were released into the care of a family, their own or a volunteer and these mentors substantially supported financially.
Getting a job is the next most important matter. Tax incentive should be considered for firms that employ ex convicts with suitable mentoring in the work place. (Henry Ford did it a hundred years ago - he insisted that a certain percentage of the workforce were ex-convicts.)
Poorer people suffer from crime disproportionally: For example, in Lambeth there were 18,000 robberies in the four years up to 2003, while in Richmond there were 1,000. The breakdown of the community via immigration (though many tight immigrant communities are very lawful and above the British norm) vice, drugs, alcohol, joblessness, family breakdown, needs to be addressed
Police deployment needs to be radically changed and concentrated.
2. Maintenance of order has been neglected, not just concentrating on the legal process of reacting to crimes:
If low-level unruly conduct is not checked, it forms the seedbed for worse conduct. The unruly encroach further on the law abiding and petty offenders feel more powerful and more able to graduate to serious criminality. This is the ‘broken windows’ theory. Maintenance of order has been brought under legal restrictions appropriate to criminal suspects. The theory has become that if undesirable behaviour is not a crime then it must be permitted.
In this way a society becomes frightened and withdrawn.
Loud music, graffiti, rowdy children, beggars, gangs of teenagers on the street, shouting and swearing on the street, are often not crimes or extremely petty ones, but they invade the lawful citizen’s space and clear the streets of the law abiding.
The police must be encouraged to take back order on the streets and not be subject to inappropriate legal restrictions on this. A reasonable suspicion of possible disturbance of the peace should be a full defence for the police in taking action to remove persons from the street for failure to move on, disorderly behaviour, drunkenness, drinking in the street, etc.
Police commanders should be judged on effectiveness.
We will consider raising the age of alcohol consumption in public houses, etc. to 21, as in parts of the USA, to check the public drunkenness epidemic.
3. ASBO’s have a part to play: London Transport, according to Ken Livingstone’s newspaper. reports a major drop in illegal ticket touting and other offences by use of ASBO’s. We must say that this is a good idea. Curfews for teenagers and young adults will be considered and enforced.
4. The courts must not adjust their throughput to be in line with resources: On the contrary, trials have become extremely protracted with lower court judges fearful of being overturned on appeal. The judiciary must consider their own role in the cost, delays and complexity of the judicial system.
5. No one should leave the court premises after sentence without immediate payment of fines or by arranging payment, if necessary, via commercial bail bondsmen. Otherwise they must go straight to prison:
The scandal of writing off hundreds of millions in fines is totally demoralizing for the courts, the police and the law abiding.
6. Numbers of police.
In 1961 81,000 police officers had to deal with 807,000 crimes. In 2003 134,000 police officers had to deal with 5.8 million crimes. Moreover they are smothered by political correctness and form filling.
The police must robustly occupy and control the streets in areas of high crime. This means more police, less legal restrictions, no unpaid fines, and immediate court sentences by courts sitting all 24 hours. In New York there are 40,000 police; in London 30,000, for the same populations. But this is misleading. Much of the Met’s work is done in New York by federal agencies, FBI, special bureaux dealing with firearms, alcohol control, etc. In London the Met also has to provide a national policing service for a capital city, including the royal family, government and diplomatic security, specialist squads, etc. Moreover, New York does not face the ‘yobbish’ behaviour disfiguring entertainment areas. The London police force, therefore, needs to be approximately doubled but it must be efficiently deployed. Sir Ian Blair on 1/2/05 commented on the different resourcing of the police in New York and London but did not suggest any changes.
7. There also needs to be a change in public and media culture where disorderly conduct is not tolerated: Public violence and drunken behaviour is one example which disfigures and disgraces our country, but which is still given ‘nod and wink’ approval in the more mindless areas of TV and other media outlets.
[I acknowledge the help of the Civitas publication ‘Cultures and Crimes’ by Norman Dennis and George Erdos]
FUTURUS/2 February 2005