Tough on crime? Tough on the causes of headlines

The political battlefront is firmly locked on crime.  The weekend's newspapers were full of items on John Reid's latest attempt to get a grip on the Home Office: a PR campaign to tell us to "Don't moan, take action - it's your street too".  It seems people were to be invited to "have a go" at anti-social behaviour and not "suffer in silence".  Reactions were, um, at best mixed, with David Davis speaking for many in his robust response:

"After six weeks of serial incompetence by the Home Office on everything from killers on probation to the escapes of serious criminals from open prisons, it is brazen beyond belief for the Government to turn around and try to shift responsibility on to shoulders of the public."

As a slogan it probably could have gone to another draft - but that doesn't matter, because today we have the news that John Reid has ditched his Don't Moan Campaign after less than 24 hours. Apparently, he never approved of the idea at all. Instead, today's crack-downs involve:

1) A radical shake-up of the centuries-old system of coroner's courts. Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith and Constitution Minister Harriet Harman have decided that the "archaic" system has to go in order to prevent another Dr Shipman running amok on the NHS waiting list.  Clearly it would be ridiculous to expect any of those thousands of NHS managers to do anything about such matters, wouldn't it?

2) Lord Goldsmith has also decided to warn the judiciary against handing down "soft sentences to sex offenders" and is calling for longer sentences.  By an amazing coincidence The Sun was today launching a campaign to have "bad judges SACKED". Ten judges are fingered for excessive leniency.  This is certainly an issue with public resonance - Keeley, 19, from Kent was so anxious to give The Sun a supportive quote that she neglected to get dressed before being photographed (no, there isn't a link for that one). Clearly, Lord Goldsmith's spurt of energy has nothing to do with his own involvement in the bungled courts martials of soldiers in Iraq - obviously our much-admired Attorney-General has simply switched his brand of cornflakes.

3) A remarkable consensus has emerged across most newspapers that Sir Ian Blair's time as Metropolitan Police Commissioner is drawing to a close because of his mishandling of the shooting of Charles de Menezes, or perhaps the swoop on two innocent men in Forest Gate, or maybe because he bugged conversations with the Attorney-General, or his unfortunate tendency to open his mouth and say something daft or ...... (add your own examples here). I'm sure our ever-popular Prime Minister will be wracked with grief if the next three months' headlines about "Blair Must Go" refer to the wrong Blair.

 

A cynic might think that this sudden flurry of stories was a good old-fashioned spin operation to distract attention and line up Sir Iain Blair as the latest fall-guy.  Surely not. 

 

Crime has rocketed up the political agenda in the last few weeks (it can only be a matter of time before Sir Ming Campbell rediscovers his enthusiasm for capital punishment) and the Government has only itself to blame for this as the endemic incompetence of the Home Office has become more widely appreciated (and providing much material for our sister-site LabourDoNotDo.com).

 

We can look forward to a long hot summer as the various parties work themselves up into a froth and lather with their exciting new policies for cracking-down on criminals, felons and riff-raff.  You might like to add your own suggestions for radical measures in the comment section (25 yrs for double-parking?  Solitary confinement for over-loud i-Pods on the Tube?)   What we almost certainly won't get from anyone is a cogent analysis of disorder or a coherent programme for reasserting the rule of law - John Reid's weekend brainstorm over moaning, for example, had probably more to do with the long-running Whitehall turf war over the "respect agenda" than any real desire to encourage citizen activism. 

 

Whatever happened  to being "tough on the causes of crime"?  Hasn't anyone noticed that you can't actually maintain law and order through newspaper headlines?

William Norton

Comments

[Serf]

Tony Martin was obviously a few years before his time.

[Richard]

People know it is wrong to steal and hurt people. They know it is wrong because they wouldn't like it if it was done to them. Yet they still commit crimes against other people. Poverty is no excuse - plenty of people in (relative) poverty do not commit crimes. To quote the amusing Henry Root but in a serious conext: criminals don't commit crimes because they are deprived, they commit them BECAUSE THEY ARE WICKED.

[TomTom]

Time to make District Judges and Circuit Judges accountable. It is incredible just how unsupervised they are by the Lord Chief Justice. It would not hurt to have some of these Barristers subjected to public hearings before appointment or even election.

Or that practising Barristers like Cherie Booth can be Recorders and practising Solicitors practising Deputy District Judges.

This is a very cosy little world which needs a few cobwebs blowing away and unleashing of McKinsey on the Courts Service.

[Chris]

Not McKinsey - or the like - please...!

[Sam Langfield]

I agree. As I argue here, Ian Blair has sustained one too many scandals.

As for prosectution, which has been mooted by some, I'm unsure as to whether there's sufficient legal grounding. We simply don't know enough yet, though we certainly do know enough to call for Blair's resignation.

[TimB]

Personally I don't really see what was wrong with the proposed Home Office campaign (other than, from their point of view, it was politically stupid). Part of the responsibility for crime does rest with society as a whole: for our 'walk on by' attitude; for the general culture of disrespect; for the way we bring up our children. Surely Conservatives don't want to say it's all government's fault. To the extent that it is their fault it is partly because they take on too much responsibility. Saying that neighbourhoods should take a stand chimes perfectly with our messages of 'trusting people' and 'sharing responsibility'.

As for the judges, while I agree some sentences are too short we should be very wary of joining tabloid populist campaigns. The independence of our judiciary is a much greater benefit than the cost of lenient sentences. And it is hard for them to sentence people for much longer until the prison system is expanded. It's virtually at breaking point.

[David Belchamber]

TimB @ 17.41: "Saying that neighbourhoods should take a stand chimes perfectly with our messages of 'trusting people' and 'sharing responsibility'."
Yes, I agree but not to the extent of "mixing it" with a gang of knife carrying youths. What this government has got so badly wrong is that, whenever there is an outcry about something, Blair simply passes new legislation, so that none of the departments have time for due process. Until the police get back to policing - in the old sense of the word - there is really little point in phoning them when there is only a potential or minor incident. They won't come out.

[Julian Morrison]

I think the law ought to change to return to the old ideal of citizens and police having identical rights, and police merely being paid to do what any able-bodied person can and may do at a pinch. The right to defense of self, other, and property ought to be enshrined in law. Any and all adults ought to get the right to apply reasonable chastisement and moral correction to yobs. And, the ancient right to go lawfully armed should be reasserted. As recently as the 19th century, Britons could buy guns at the ironmonger. They were withdrawn amid fears over anarchists, but look who has the guns now!

[Jack Stone]

We should never go down the route of making the law part of the political system.
The law in this county must be free and the judges independant so they can administer as they see fit.
It is up to Parliament to make law and the justice sysyem to administer it and I am afraid that once you bring politics into the law you get corruption and bad law.

[Bishop Hill]

Julian Morrison at 19:21

Quite right. It's also worth pointing out that before sidelining of the constitutional right to bear arms, it was a legal requirement for members of the public to intervene if they saw a felony being committed. In this way policing was primarily the responsibility of society, rather than the state.

[Richard North]

Bravo! Allow me to carry a gun and I will willingly bear the responsibility of intervening to prevent unsocial (and worse) behaviour. As for expecting me to challenge a disorderly youth when there is a possibility of having a knife pulled on me... forget it!

The point of course is that it only takes a few people to be carrying guns and the law breakers are much less likely to be inclined to carry on their behaviour with such brazen defiance. Confronted with a group of people, they have no means of knowing which, if any, are armed.

[Daniel Vince-Archer]

"As for expecting me to challenge a disorderly youth when there is a possibility of having a knife pulled on me... forget it!

The point of course is that it only takes a few people to be carrying guns and the law breakers are much less likely to be inclined to carry on their behaviour with such brazen defiance."

The trouble is, instead of having a knife pulled on you, you could quite easily end up having a gun pulled on you instead.

[Julian Morrison]

Daniel Vince-Archer: unlikely. That would require a petty thug with backbone, which is more or less a contradiction in terms.

The core point about guns, is that good, responsible citizens outnumber crooks hundreds to one. Those odds only look safe when facing people who've been disarmed and made defenseless by law.

[Dave J]

"...once you bring politics into the law you get corruption and bad law."

Oh, please: do you really mean to say you don't have corruption and bad law now? It's an utterly naive and self-destructively deferential fantasy to imagine politics can be kept out of the law, or that it currently IS kept out of the law. What you already have is a highly incestuous and utterly unaccountable little clique running your legal system that regards most of the public that it nominally serves with a degree of contempt it barely even bothers trying to conceal.

Perhaps it's my own bias as a former staffer for the judiciary committee of a state legislature in the US, but there really IS such a thing as too much judicial independence. Power without accountability is tyranny, plain and simple: that it wears judicial robes keeps a great deal many from noticing.

[sjm]

At least two of the fundamental problems of dealing with crime and its punishment are 1.over the last 50 years, a combination of welfarism and a Left-leaning intelligentsia has helped breed a substantial underclass that feels no responsibility to society; and
2.punishments are devised by the well-meaning middle-classes, thus measures that would cause distress and remorse to them (prison, fines, publicity etc) are imposed on a group of people who either couldn't care less or regard such measures as merit badges.