“The Tory answer is the same …send all the offenders to prison”

Surely that has to be better than Labour’s plan to let offenders go free because they haven’t built enough prisons?

That said, Mr Grieve seems to be of the opinion that the public don’t get involved in fights because they are scared of prosecution, whereas I suspect that they don’t get involved because they are worried that the little s*** currently kicking the living daylights out of a pensioner is probably carrying a large knife and will kill them if they intervene.

Just a hunch.

Don’t get involved – call the police – and wait for them to not turn up.
Right.

Though isn’t the real probelm the low-level stuff which ruins everyone’s quality of life.
How about the loud playing of crap music on the bus or tube?
The throwing of litter in the park?

Is it too “blue rinsed” of me to want to do something about this?
(In fact I always challenge it, normally “successfully” even if met with abuse, but then I do have tightly cropped hair and can look quite “tough” – even though the reverse is true!!)

Whilst it is undeniably the young person’s responsibility not to be carrying a knife, on the other hand, they carry these knives because they are the best means of defence should there be a spot of bother.

Poor babies. Did you carry one then?

David, it’s known as a “dog whistle” in the trade. The Tories know well that grandmothers (i) contain more Tory supporters than the electorate at large (ii) are more likely to vote than other people (iii) generally disapprove of the way their daughters raise their grandchildren.

It’s the sort of thing opposition parties do when they need to get in the media but haven’t got anything in particular to say.

Not mentioned in this piece but widely reported was Grieve’s desire for a return to ‘common sense’ policing. “Common sense” is one of the canards which the Tories trot out every so often. It is of course meaningless.

First of all, it’s next-to-impossible to define common sense legally. Secondly, what Grieve really means by ‘common sense’ is ‘thinking the same way that we do’.

There is a myth abroad, perpetuated by the Tories, that there are legions of good honest citizens being banged up for telling kids to fuck off/pipe down/go and play somewhere else. The instances that hit the news are where miscreants take offence at being so told and seriously injure or kill the person giving them the telling off. The other instances are the ones where the adults start laying into the kids physically. Irrespective of what the kids were up to immediately before the assault, this kind of behaviour cannot be condoned or otherwise encouraged.

So if the vapourware is stripped away what are we left with? Nothing. There is plenty that the government could do to ameliorate that low-level anti-social behaviour which blights many people’s lives. In fact, this should be a priority because there is actually very little that ordinary people can do if the police themselves won’t do anything, whether due to staffing and commitment pressures or because they don’t consider it worthy of their time and talents.

One can insure against losses caused by burglary. One cannot insure against having ones peace and quiet and sleep ruined by anti-social scumbags. The police would better serve the community by prioritising the reduction of anti-social behaviour over ‘solving’ crimes likes burglary, even though I do accept that around here at any rate (Humberside) the police aren’t really interested in investigating burglaries.

I think what the government should do to tackle anti-social behaviour (i.e doing things that may not be crimes but still have a negative impact on other people) is allow the courts to issue orders against those being anti-social requiring them to cease such behaviour or face a possible prison sentence.

Oh wait….they’ve already done that.

“every time Cameron, Clegg or their respective cronies come out with stuff like this”

Yes, because the Tories and Lib Dems are *exactly the same*, aren’t they?
And maybe opposition politicians wouldn’t spend so much time ‘making Labour look bad’ if Labour weren’t making it *so incredibly easy* for them…

It is that blue-rinsed throwback to the 1950s which I think motivates Grieve in this instance – and is not just politically opportunistic, it is damn right irresponsible.

Are you so sure that everything about today is better than everything about the 50s ?. If , as Labour like to , you excuse criminals more or less on the basis of being poor in the 1950s we should have faced brigands looters and in general a New Dark Ages . Actually it was only the 1960s , which sought to jettisoned the idea of deference to age , that the roots of our problems begin . No one thing can re-aquire the orderly society we once enjoyed nor would we want to return . On the other hand the Police have had their chance and not only failed but ceased to try . Only people in a community make it a good community and that means talking the law , at a low level , into your own hands especially with kidz .

The accusation that the opposition Parties which to make Labour look bad is …well what can you say to such an absurd remark . Prat , and people do not carry knives for defence they carry them for offence .

There are two things wrong with current Tory press releases about ‘youth’, ‘crime’, ‘breakdown of society’ etc. First, they are hopelessly out of touch with the reality of the country we live in. Second, all the policies they advocate seem to fit naturally and easily into the current New Labour program.

David Semple might try reading or hearing what Clegg and his cronies are actually saying. It is a bit different from the two right wing parties spoutings.

The definition of ‘common sense’ in my common usage handbook is ‘not necessarily the same thing as good sense’.

“Surely that has to be better than Labour’s plan to let offenders go free because they haven’t built enough prisons?”

I do love how we keep ignoring modern history on this issue, at least if you’re a Tory it seems. Labour have boosted prisoner numbers SPECIFICALLY by targeting more youth criminals for more petty crimes and sticking them in prison on short sentences. The overcrowding problem is BECAUSE of trying to solve the youth crime problem with prison time. As for simply letting them go, currently that is obviously the case, given the Labour policy of more zero tolerance than the Tories gave in the years previously and nothing to do with actual levels of crime, but then it is the Labour party that wants to build super-prisons to deal with overpopulation as a solution, rather than to deal with halting crime.

Come on LFaT. You’re usually pretty thoughtful, though ideologically different to those here…why engage in a simple and basic misrepresentation and misunderstanding of reality.

“How about the loud playing of crap music on the bus or tube?”

Ah yes, “adults” have more rights to what goes on in their vicinity than kids. Crap music being played? Well as long as it’s crap music that someone over 21 likes as opposed to someone under 16! If that isn’t the case then we of course need powers to rectify this abhorrent situation!

How about the loud playing of crap music on the bus or tube?

They play (crappy) Bollywood music on most buses in India. People love it.

I reckon they should pay classical music on tubes and buses here.

And maybe opposition politicians wouldn’t spend so much time ‘making Labour look bad’ if Labour weren’t making it *so incredibly easy* for them

New Labour policies aren’t perfect, but then I struggle to wonder what the perfect situation is. What is the answer? Press-release attacking is rather easy.

Only yesterday the Tories issued a press release attacking New Labour for playing identity politics…. in the same month the Tories picked a master of identity politics for their Southall seat.

“I reckon they should pay classical music on tubes and buses here.”
I don’t – the last thing we need is more music being inflicted on those who don’t want it. It’s practically impossible to avoid other people’s ‘taste’ in music as it is…

“New Labour policies aren’t perfect,”

Understatement of the century, there…

Since Labour came to power gun crime has risen from 864 to 3821 ( The year before last god knows what it is now ). Thats during a boom . More to the point the youth justice board said violence against under 18s increased by 39%I n three years Robbery up 45% in the same period ( up to 6855 pa) A steep rise in girls crime as well . It is also true that you are less likely to be caught tried and sent to prison if you commit a crime here than anywhere else in Europe . My hopes were never high but it has been a disgrace to end them all.
How simply delicious to see New labour painted as the blushing virgin and nasty old Conservatives as the showy propaganda mongers . Lets see now what deadly serious attempts to tackle crime do I recall ? Three strikes , on the spot fines , night courts , drop off zones , hand held thingy devices , drugs Tsars , 60 yes that’s 60 criminal justice bills all no more than part of the Press campaign. And yet as ever have they done anything useful. No. Kilmarnock Prison was built at a cost of £33 mio in 1999 and holds 700 . Staggering the money could not be found to imprison criminals but oh so much for tribes of serfs doing nothing ID cards et al.
All this at a cost of a mere 40% increase in spending .26% more police but actually deducting civilian staff only 11% more police but yippee a 62 % increase in support and administrative staff. This , when the rest of the word has slashed admin costs . Go back to Thatcher and Major ? Well you might as well go back to the Edwardian period . So much has changed although some of the conditions are returning with mass unemployment Unions running the country etc. A particular problem has been the elimination of the boozer , replaced by licences given to high street head frying chemical abuse clubs . The Police hate and deplore it but to New Labour love a jingling cash register so long as it is an unsustainable slash and burn con bound to end in tears
Lee you are right the socially liberal Thatcher period gets little credit for its attempts to get beyond incarceration . In fact usually the commenters on this site will be the first to forget modern history and remember Thatcher as a hang `em and flog`em quasi Nazi who just loved locking people up. I am glad you are able to set the record straight .(Nick Coen agreed in “ Whats Left “). The Conservative Party have not given up either but this is all ina the right context.. In the Policy paper “Prisons with a Purpose an incentives scheme for reducing recidivism was proposed but it comes from the assumption that serious crimes would receive honest sentences .
Of course it was not the case then that the police did not bother to investigate burglaries spent most of their time being poor clerks and chasing the law abiding to fill “TARGETS “ ,when they are not throwing a sicky (20 per year in the Met) and defrauding their PA policy . The human rights act is hated even by its sponsor Straw and the legal balance has continued to tip the criminals way. The wider left constituency operate behind the New Labour rhetoric to great effect . Paradoxically every time they are asked the Police say they cannot do their job because of red tape . Sir Ronnie Flanagan
Was especially vocal but many many more have weighed in. ( Peter Fahey CC of Cheshire wetc.)
250 forms in regular use
79,000 stop and search forms filled
56 million hours spent on paperwork ( say Lib Dems
207 front line officers per 100,000 people here 387 in France .

New Labour , as we know , are as likely to sentence the victim for his greater social opportunity. . At heart there is no clear belief in personal responsibility which why Labour can never be trusted on crime ( Equally this is why Blair made such an issue of it but his lacks of clarity set the tone for failure “ Tough on the causes ….yeah yeah… ) Prisons to be come so cushy that inmates refuse to escape ,and often live at a higher standard of living that the neighbouring estate , far above the children’s home .

New Labour`s punishment should be to listen to Sunny Hundal`s Bombay mix for hours at a time on the way to some, silly demo. That’s what I call deterrence !

“New Labour , as we know , are as likely to sentence the victim for his greater social opportunity.”

You’re being hysterical again.

Lets have 3 specific examples, from the last 2 years, of victims of crime recieving a greater punishment than the perpetrator of the crime against them.

Using hyperbole , a comic and rhetorical device PS ( and I think thats from Yes minister isn`t it ?)

Is it still possible in practice to make a citizen’s arrest without being accused of assault? If one places a violent person in an armlock but they resist such that they are injured is one going to be arrested for assault? Can anyone explain how and when a member of the public can intervene to prevent a public affray?

“Prisons to be come so cushy that inmates refuse to escape ,and often live at a higher standard of living that the neighbouring estate , far above the children’s home .”

You lot do tie yourself in knots on this don’t you. Criminals living in luxury, the bastards…it’s not enough that they’re put away, but that they are (in some bizarro world) happy to be in prison is too much. You’d rather they were sad and feeling impoverished in prison and wanting to break out…that’s the better situation to be in!

Who gives a shit what standard of living prisoners get, the only thing that matters is that they get rehabilitated and people that are dangerous are kept out of society. That’s assuming, as the original point was, that those people should even be in prison anyway for the minor crimes they take part in (and are then forced in to a system that increases their chance of reoffending by something like 20%). I mean, give us a break, we’re not exactly in famine era Ireland here are we?

Charlie: If you can manage to perform the citizens arrest without smacking the guy (or girl) about a bit, or pretending you actually have any powers or rights other than to keep them detained while the police arrive, you’re probably ok.

New Labour policies aren’t perfect, but then I struggle to wonder what the perfect situation is. What is the answer?

Nice straw-man there, Sunny. Things don’t have to be perfect in order to be better.

One of the striking things about many Labour policies is that it is trivially easy to come up with a better policy, simply by putting the word “Not” in front of the Labour proposal.

Not locking people up without charge for 42 days

Not invading Iraq

Not introducing a national identity database

The list goes on. What these sorts of Labour policy have in common is that they are not responses to real world problems. Simply not doing them doesn’t demand any alternative policy. You can just… not do them.

Of course, not all issues are like that. We do need some economic policy or other, for example, and serious critics of Labour’s economics do need to put forward positive alternatives. Vince Cable, for example, has spent some years doing just that, and this country would be in somewhat better financial shape if Labour had taken his criticisms and his proposals seriously.

Iain Coleman,

It is so easy to knock, isn’t it?

Whilst I agree with your list of ‘nots’, the same idea could apply equally to any of the shit that spews from Conservative party spokesmen too, could it not?

Not frightening folk unnecessarily so they live in a climate of fear.

Not demonising kids

Not denigrating human rights, or

not glorifying the thieving bastards in the City,

etc, etc.

Silly game…..

Who gives a shit what standard of living prisoners get, the only thing that matters is that they get rehabilitated and people that are dangerous are kept out of society.

Thats not the point , the point is punishment and justice . Rehabilitation is a secondary and sperate matter

What’s the point of punishing someone unless they don’t go and reoffend after they are reintroduced into society? And if they reoffend no justice has been served.

Prison is there primarily to protect society from offenders until they are released and secondly to secure society by rehabilitating them for when they are released. All punishment is returned morefold on the people who inflict it.

A bad prison service is as good as a deferred death sentence for the state which runs it.

[22] Punishment first, justice second and rehabilitation last… you really have a bleak view of your fellow human beings, don’t you, New Mania?

I was taught that the possible purposes of punishment are retribution, deterrence and reform. The first of these is merely institutionalised sadism.

We think it wrong to assault people on an individual basis. But it’s OK to do it collectively – it’s called patriotic war in one context, or retributive punishment in another.

There is an assumption that a penal policy based on rehabilitation would be “soft”. It is perfectly possible to envisage one that would be anything but. Try this. No one to be let out of jail until they are functionally literate and numerate. No one convicted of a crime committed under the influence of drink or drugs (this probably applies to 80%+ of inmates) to be let out until they’ve addressed their addiction problem.

“There isn’t a person in their right mind who can’t see that every time Cameron, Clegg or their respective cronies come out with stuff like this, it’s merely about making Labour look bad.”

A totally mystifying assertion in the light of the rest of this piece. The Lib Dems are the only party who seem to be remotely worried about the criminalisation of an entire generation which you then claim to be concerned with.

http://libdems.org.uk/home/community-justice-panels-work-for-victims-and-offenders-huhne-50511;show

http://libdems.org.uk/policies/liberal-democrats-outline-youth-crime-proposals-416600;show

http://libdems.org.uk/assets/0000/7992/A_Life_Away_From_Crime.pdf

And from the latter:

“Labour‘s approach has criminalised a generation of young people. More and
more of our kids are being dragged into the criminal justice system for minor
offences and are getting a criminal record. Since the ‘offences brought to
justice’ targets were introduced in 2002, the number of children being pushed
into the criminal justice system has risen by over a quarter, two-and-a-half
times faster than adults.2 It is not working. Youth crime and re-offending rates
have remained high. Labour’s approach is a criminal creation scheme, when
what we need is an effective system of preventing young people from getting
involved in crime in the first place.”

While we’re waiting:

“indeed with all these pronouncements, it would be someone with a good memory who could actually list all these promises.”

No need. Once my other post appears, you’ll have a set of lovely links to the Liberal Democrat youth crime policy paper and related announcements. And they seem to be – oh! – rather in tune with your stated concerns about young people being seen as the root of all evil by the Tories. In fact they seem to be positively concerned about the demonisation of young people. That’s nice isn’t it.

Incidentally, on the subject of knee-jerk announcement, this is from Chris Huhne’s Bournemouth speech:

“…we now have a crime debate totally removed from reality.

Take an example in July. A Labour Home Secretary announced she would march young offenders into hospital to see the consequences of violence. She ignored the evidence from the United States that such programmes do not cut crime, but put it up. Four days later, she ditched the idea.

Or take David Cameron. He knows that you can get four years in jail for just carrying a knife, but he thinks that judges tiptoe around knife crime. So he wants to send every knife carrier to prison automatically.

Just a small problem. If he did, the prison population would nearly quadruple. The basic rate of income tax would go up by a penny in the pound.

Oh, and another problem. The evidence shows it wouldn’t work.”

Newmania – even you have gone too far.

The point is not “punishment”; it is as Mike says, incapacitation and rehabilitation.
We are not that good at the second, but the first has clearly worked.
As the prison population has grown, so crime has fallen.
Now we need to take the second seriously too – but not by compromising on the first.

I reckon they should pay classical music on tubes and buses here.

What an absolutely splendid suggestion. It really may be the best thing I have read on this website. I would love to hear Elgar in the morning and some Wagner on my way home.

Thanks Alix, some good points. I’ve released your post.

cjcj – I am not at all surprised to see that you and others do not even see a role for justice in jurisprudence . This shows a subtlety of thought I can only admire and demonstrates the unfitness of Liberals to govern better than anything I could say. Funnily enough It was the Lib Dems who suggested that a more retributive element should be included in sentencing . Weeding someone garden I suppose , I thought it was a good idea . I see now that what we suspect is true . You would rather spend money on criminals than honest people .

I would enjoy the Elgar and find the Wagner a bit of a challenge . The perfect combination. I don`t see why not neither , the poetry on the tube campaign was a great success . I enjoyed it anyway

They already play classical music at Wood Green and Turnpike Lane tube stations (just your common or garden Mozart, Pachelbel et al, all nice stuff). I would enjoy it very much if it wasn’t marred in a nightmarish dystopian manner by the enormous knife detection portal and the half dozen heavily armed police officers. That’s modern Britain all over, that is.

Newmania @30 – this would be the community justice panels, in my links. Though the idea specifically is that you’re called on to weed someone’s garden if your crime was, e.g. pissing on their doorstep. Restitution for the victim, rather than retribution against the criminal.

Newmania,
in a liberal world people are not governed – we govern ourselves.

It’s a shame you don’t rate consistency very highly – will you continue to criticise those who disagree with you as authoritarian after outing yourself as one?

As for music on the tube I quite like listening for birdsong in the outer zones and the roar and murmur and hub-bub of city life in the inner zones. No need for canned music, maybe a few more buskers though.

“Not frightening folk unnecessarily so they live in a climate of fear.

Not demonising kids

Not denigrating human rights, or

not glorifying the thieving bastards in the City,”

I thought you were going to start talking about the Tories, Douglas, not Labour!

Newmania: “Thats not the point , the point is punishment and justice . Rehabilitation is a secondary and sperate matter”

Punishment and justice are a fools game if they are not backed up by rehabilitation. So you cut off a man’s hand for stealing a loaf of bread. If you don’t teach him the rights and wrongs at the same time all he is is a criminal that may or may not fear the almighty hand-choppers to not do it again. Give him training so that he can go get a one handed job rather than simply cast him back in to whatever situation made him steal a loaf of bread and you’ve cut his re-offending chance even more. I guess you can just keep lopping pieces of his body off but thankfully we don’t live in stupid countries that still believe in a warped eye for an eye punishment system which is *precisely* where your type of thinking has directly evolved from.

If you could tell, for sure (and that’s obviously where the rub lies, I’m of course being fantastical) that a murderer is repentant and rehabilitated within a month, that is to say that his personality has been altered enough that he feels no more murderous than anyone should, then why spend money keeping him in jail? For revenge? To be able to spit in his eye and tell him what a shit he is? Seriously…what would the point be?

eye for an eye punishment system which is *precisely* where your type of thinking has directly evolved from.

An eye for an eye -You misunderstand its import which was to limit revenge. Its importance in the Middle East is still apparent . An eye for an eye in the case of Rose West would involve serially raping torturing and killing on umpteen occasions . It has not applied in the UK where we early on developed away from a revenge based system
The image I would draw your attention to are the scales of justice . The scales of justice refer to the quite different idea of weighing the rights and wrong so as to re-establish balance .This would be typically by referring to other positions this one was like establishing the proper context for the singular incident and thereby restore justice in a way approximating to an impersonal rightness .The point is that we can all sign up to such a system and give away our freedoms on the basis that this justice is indeed as close as we can come to the omniscience to a true balancing . This was how Common Law created our astonishing non violent country

Without this moral and societal framework the state has no justification for locking anyone up at all , or for denying people their right to revenge, both as a moral imperative and a social necessity . It is certainly not enough to justify removing freedoms that it suits social convenience . Should my children be killed and it not suit social convenience to exact a proper retribution I would do it myself . This comes from “love” that perists beyond convenience or even existence . the Liberals would bag`em up and forget it.
On rehabilitation I have no special objection to it but as we have limited resources and illiteracy disease and squalor still stalk the country I am confused as to why my taxes should be benefiting criminals when good honest people deserving help are so many .Aside from this it does not work.

Alix said Restitution for the victim, rather than retribution against the criminal.

Then why not get anyone to do it ? . You are wrong this was an attempt to reclaim some respect on Law and order . Obviously not to be taken seriously judging by the comments I see.

[36] What is your evidence that rehabilitation doesn’t work?

What is your evidence that rehabilitation doesn’t work ?

There are one or two clues that we should be concerned about – for example, it has been claimed that reconviction rates (amongst teenager offenders with a significant pattern of offending) may be as high as 91%, this despite an intensive supervision and surveillance programme.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/oct/28/crime.uknews

Meanwhile the National Audit Office report that offenders were failing to turn up to meetings with probation officers because they had overslept, or had transport difficulties – obviously it’s hard to benefit from any service if you fail to engage with it in the first place.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7218310.stm

We certainly see the effects of various crimes in A&E (hit and runs, casual violence, sexual assaults, etc) – as well as a fair few patients brought directly to A&E from custodial settings because they have taken an overdose, say, or have collapsed after arrest.

The hostile attitude of some of these individuals makes it very hard to see how effective rehabilitation can be offered simply because they appear to be so damaged themselves.
I suspect a fair few have not even attained the most basic of educational standards and offending patterns may well be compounded by drug dependency – not scientific evidence, of course, just my observations.

Lee @ 35,

Heh. Point taken. I suppose I could have been talking about either of them really!

So, you make an interesting point. What’s to chose? I don’t think that there are many folk around here that admire the uncritical fawning by politicians to media driven agendas. Whilst ignoring the likes of thee and me.

It is a conundrum. How do we break out of that downward spiral? I think I know what your answer will be…