The Media, Labour and Crime in the UK

[Ste]

I just read this article and thought it held a lot of facts and figures that people would find interesting:

The prison population rose sharply last week. The Home Office expects it to hit an all-time high next week, topping the 77,800 record. It predicts that prisons will burst their seams by autumn, overflowing into emergency police cells. There are some 500 spare places in open prisons, but risk-aversion in the face of a media storm leaves them empty.

Why this relentless rise? Crime is in long-term decline, down 43% since 1995, according to the British Crime Survey (BCS) - falling all across Europe, though few believe it. (The BCS doesn't include under-16s, but the Youth Justice Board says there is no rise there either.)

One good reason for the rise is improved crime detection, the best in five years. Another good reason is that courts have 40% fewer "ineffective" trials abandoned through bungling. But the single overwhelming reason why jails are bursting is longer sentences given for more crimes. An unquenchable thirst for punishment has seen the numbers given prison sentences rise by 53% in the same decade that crime has fallen.

Of all the obnoxious qualities of the British press - its cynicism, its relentless "nothing works" projection of a society in perpetual decline - what the media does to criminal justice is the most measurably pernicious of all. But Labour has fed the frenzy and tried, unsuccessfully, to ride the tiger. There is an awful justice in Labour coming to grief over the Home Office, where its policies have most cynically ignored what works. Ever since "tough on crime", Labour has never dared to talk down punishment fever or tell voters that we already have the longest sentences in Europe.

The result? More criminals reoffend. The Prison Reform Trust points to official figures showing how prison overcrowding raises the reoffending rate. In 1995 56% reoffended within two years of release - now it is 67% (53% of those given community sentences reoffend).

Prison governors despair at the churn of inmates, forever moved on far from home, disrupting treatment, education and training. Most prisons now miss their targets for "purposeful activity". "What's the use of sending us people for a few months, just long enough to lose their home, family and job?" said one governor of a crowded inner-city prison. "By the time they've waited to get on a course here, they are moved on or out."

Knife crime is the panic of the day. Recently there have been some horrible murders, including those of a brave student defending a woman on a train, a father of three stabbed after spending a day volunteering, and a popular 15-year-old knifed outside his school gates - all heartbreaking deaths.

They were enough to send the press phoning round police stations for more hair-raising knife tales: there were plenty to be found. It was, they said, "a wave", "a spate", "an epidemic". Reporters hung out on the streets with boys eager to brag about the "shanks" in their pockets. This 15-year-old claims he's called "Killer" and shows the Mirror his fancy-handled knife with pride. That one boasts of the people he's shanked to get respect. Indeed, police have seized 50% more knives: the symbolic knife amnesty lasts another week.

But horrible though these crimes are, there is no upsurge. In 1995 there were 243 murders with sharp instruments; 10 years later there were slightly fewer, at 236 last year. Over the decade the average weekly number of knife murders has been four and a half - and recently, during this panic, there have been no more than four knife murders a week. Anecdotes stick horribly in the memory, but the figures tell another story.

Knowing that knifings are not "out of control" but probably in a steady state would calm public nerves. But instead of explaining that, the government promises to lock everyone up. John Reid is considering amending the violent crime reduction bill to introduce a mandatory five-year sentence for carrying a knife. Add to that the insane Home Office plan to give a 14-year sentence to anyone caught with enough cannabis for 10 joints, and there will be hardly a young man left outside jail. Add another increase from next November's "custody plus" sentence, which will give magistrates the option to give petty criminals a short prison taster before a community sentence. (Due to an oversight, no one on a custody-plus sentence can be forced into drug or alcohol treatment programmes.)

Short jail sentences are worse than useless, as the public accounts committee said this week, led by the rightwing Tory Edward Leigh; the committee has called for alternatives to jail and for the 5,000 inmates with serious mental illnesses to be moved to the NHS, where they belong. But the parties respond to crime panic by fanning the flames. The Tories clamour for more prisons to be built. Now the Lib Dems are getting tough: "Sir Menzies Campbell has made the fight against crime a priority for his leadership," they announce. Labour responds with its latest pathetic yah-boo email: "Lib Dems soft on crime, soft on thugs". What hope in this climate?

Tony Blair held a crime seminar in Downing Street this week; criminologists I spoke to afterwards had come away tearing their hair out in distress. He seemed to mix together low-level antisocial behaviour with serious crime, terror and other international crime into a single pot of alarm - questioning whether human rights, laws of evidence and civil liberties tipped things too much against the rights of victims.

The one victims' right that matters most is cutting the risk of crime. So what really works? Treatments in jail do some good, but it's mostly too late: finding a family and a job or just growing older make most prisoners eventually give up crime. A Reading jail wing where Transco trains gas fitters and guarantees them all a job when they come out works brilliantly. Why not more of that?

How tragically revealing that half of all prisoners are completely illiterate and another 20% have a reading age under eight. The Shannon Trust gets prisoners to teach each other to read; it costs just £70 per pupil over about six months, and gives the mentors a new sense of self-worth. But many prisons are too overcrowded to be able to do it.

However, tucked away in the Cabinet Office's own strategic audit is the kind of evidence the prime minister should be poring over. Unpublished Home Office research assessing the cost-effectiveness of ways to reduce crime has produced astonishing results. Estimating crimes reduced per £1,000 spent, they find (depressingly) that current drug treatment cuts only 1.3 crimes. (There are very few residential drug-treatment places, when addicts need Priory-type intensive help.) Hot-spot policing cuts 1.9 crimes. Reoffending-reduction schemes in prison cut 2.3 crimes. But parenting programmes cut 11 crimes. And Youth Inclusion and Support Panels cut 15 crimes per £1,000 spent. In these a panel of all the local services takes eight- to 13-year-olds at highest risk and gives them intensive support before it's too late - treating 36,000 of the most precarious children, with these good results. But has anyone heard of it? Why doesn't Labour talk about its most successful programmes? Prison numbers will go on rising until politicians stop running scared of the Daily Mail and start talking about what really works.

Then pandering to the media is just another thing that pisses me off about Labour.
Along with the culture of increasing sentences and shoving more and more people into prison.

So anyway, what do you think of the findings in the article and what are your general thoughts on the subject?

[Marilyn Manson]

Originally Posted by Ste

So anyway, what do you think of the findings in the article and what are your general thoughts on the subject?

I'd like Tony Blair to fight the next election. So he can lose it.

The article is only surprising to anyone who believes that Labour has any credibility left, which I don't think anyone does. The whole of New Labour in social policy terms is built around a quick-fix, media-gimmicky focus group approach, and it's incoherent and totally ineffectual as a result.

[Dante Hicks]

It's OK, things will be much better when we get the Conservatives back in government!

[Ste]

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

I would point out that judges actually pass sentences, not the Labour party.

Surely the Labour party can (and do) propose tougher sentences for crimes - such as a minimum of 5 years for being caught with a knife and things like that?

[Marilyn Manson]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

It's OK, things will be much better when we get the Conservatives back in government!

Admit it. You like having a proper, fully-blown reactionary-statist government in power oppressing the workers. The current lot just don't give you the same buzz, do they?

[Ste]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

It's OK, things will be much better when we get the Conservatives back in government!

The problem at the moment is that there is no opposition.

At least with the Conservatives in power the Labour whips office would have to resort to something other than "if you don't vote for it then the tories will get back in"

The Conservatives wouldn't have dared introduce some of the reforms Labour have, simply because they knew they would get fought down in parliament.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Ste

The Conservatives wouldn't have dared introduce some of the reforms Labour have, simply because they knew they would get fought down in parliament.

It depends. If the Conservatives had been in power with the same majority as Blair enjoyed in '97 then it's probable their policies would have been worse. If you have a large majority (and even a vaguely disciplined party) you can do pretty much as you please. It's a mistake to think that the main body of the parliamentary Conservative party is made up of reasonable people and not deranged right wing nutters.

Originally Posted by Marilyn Manson

Admit it. You like having a proper, fully-blown reactionary-statist government in power oppressing the workers. The current lot just don't give you the same buzz, do they?

Oh, I don't know. They're doing a good line in oppressing the Arabs, so it's all good.

[Marilyn Manson]

Originally Posted by Ste

The problem at the moment is that there is no opposition.

There is an opposition, but there's no political diversity or any kind of means by which parties are encouraged to actually represent what they believe, instead of subscribing to some half-baked, shitty consensus which supposedly works politically and electorally.

The high-political atmosphere in this country is probably the most stifled in the world, even including America.

[Ste]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

It depends. If the Conservatives had been in power with the same majority as Blair enjoyed in '97 then it's probable their policies would have been worse. If you have a large majority (and even a vaguely disciplined party) you can do pretty much as you please. It's a mistake to think that the main body of the parliamentary Conservative party is made up of reasonable people and not deranged right wing nutters.

Possibly, but Blair's worst reforms have come since 2001.
However, it's all about general public perception. If the tables were turned then Labour would be crying out "how can you privatise parts of the NHS" "how can you be doing this to schools" etc etc which would get reported on.
Currently Labour propose something, Conservatives go against it saying "we like the idea but we want these changes" Labour happily change them and then it goes through.

[milo]

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

There is an issue of a perception of greater leniency at a time when sentenes have risen dramatically and crime was already falling. Furthermore there is little evidence that increasing sentences has had a significant impact on reducing crime inandofitself. Even a dramatic increase in sentencing only has a short term affect on crime.

'perception' from whom though? to me it seems little more than the tabloids scratching their arses for a story and thinking 'hmmmm we've pushed the asylum seekers for the past few weeks how about the rampand rise in crime'

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

I knew that masters thesis would come in handy one day.

Using it to paper over the cracks in the legal system am i rite?

[Dante Hicks]

I don't really like how all attitudes to crime are lumped together anyway. I don't know anyone who thinks that people who carry cannabis should be imprionsed, but I know lots of people who think child molestors should be badly beaten with an iron bar. Trying to flatten these things together seems misleading at best.

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

I don't really like how all attitudes to crime are lumped together anyway. I don't know anyone who thinks that people who carry cannabis should be imprionsed, but I know lots of people who think child molestors should be badly beaten with an iron bar. Trying to flatten these things together seems misleading at best.

That's more an attitude towards what is a crime really.






PS T&F is one humourless dingus when he's at work

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

That's more an attitude towards what is a crime really.

Maybe, but that's hardly represented in any discussions about sentencing.

Also I'd say that differences in feeling applies (among most people I've encountered) to things like armed robbery, shoplifting and certain types of fraud too. Certainly with things like that recent big cash robbery a few months ago most people I met spoke with a degree of admiration about the affair and a degree of hope they get away with it (although most would definitely agree it was a crime). When it comes to child molestors or most types of murders I rarely meet anyone who wouldn't want drastic (and usually violent) punishment speedily visited upon the perpetrators.

[JonnyBGood]

Well, obviously. People respect human life and dignity more than they respect the concept of private property and the rights of financial institutions.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

Well, obviously. People respect human life and dignity more than they respect the concept of private property and the rights of financial institutions.

I am not a people .

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

People respect human life and dignity more than they respect the concept of private property and the rights of financial institutions.

Of course. But then it becomes misleading to talk about people being "tough on crime" or "demanding higher criminal sentences" when, for a good proportion of currently defined "crime", they couldn't give a monkeys.

[Another Slayer]

Originally Posted by Marilyn Manson

Democracy is built around a quick-fix, media-gimmicky focus group approach, and it's incoherent and totally ineffectual as a result.

fixed...

[milo]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

Well, obviously. People respect human life and dignity more than they respect the concept of private property and the rights of financial institutions.

...until you ask to build an asylum seeker centre/parole house/gypsy site/anything a nimby objects to or you tell them that those uber cheap chinese goods are made in iffy working conditions

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by milo

...until you ask to build an asylum seeker centre/parole house/gypsy site/anything a nimby objects to or you tell them that those uber cheap chinese goods are made in iffy working conditions

No dude dante was specifically referring to people he knows and discusses these things with which sort of narrows it down to commie pinko scum.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by milo

...until you ask to build an asylum seeker centre/parole house/gypsy site/anything a nimby objects to or you tell them that those uber cheap chinese goods are made in iffy working conditions

Asylum seekers/criminals/chinese workers aren't humans.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

No dude dante was specifically referring to people he knows and discusses these things with which sort of narrows it down to commie pinko scum.

I don't know many commies sadly, but yes it does restrict it away from NIMBY type people and towards more drug addict degenerates and clubbers.

[acropolis]

what was the problem with deporting criminals to penal colonies again?

[Ste]

Originally Posted by acropolis

what was the problem with deporting criminals to penal colonies again?

They became the best cricket team in the world

[Yahwe]

if we have decided to let ste go on posting threads.

could i ask that he post threads with some sort of purpose?

a link saying 'what do you think of this' is far too reminiscant of kura to endure.

[dda]

Clearly the reason the jails are begining to burst is because Yahwe has forsaken the defense bar for filthy money!

[Ste]

Originally Posted by Yahwe

if we have decided to let ste go on posting threads.

could i ask that he post threads with some sort of purpose?

a link saying 'what do you think of this' is far too reminiscant of kura to endure.

nice to see you add something to the thread/forum

[Paisley]

From what I can read from that artical, Can Britain afford to keep our current attitude? Sure we can keep switching from a labour to a conservative government and vise versa. But will the problem go away?

[Dace]

Originally Posted by Paisley

From what I can read from that artical, Can Britain afford to keep our current attitude? Sure we can keep switching from a labour to a conservative government and vise versa. But will the problem go away?

Sadly i fear politicians are here to stay :(

[Another Slayer]

And so are stupid exaggeratory newspaper articles that print out of context statistics without adequate explanation, which then get all the stupid people in the country riled up demanding the government "DO SOMETHING!!!!!11111"

[Paisley]

Originally Posted by Dace

Sadly i fear politicians are here to stay

Just not the ones that get the right results

[Snurx]

Its like this in Norway too. Crimerates are lowering or at least keeping a steady pace, it's still not dangerous to go out in Oslo, and the muslims are not taking over. However, if you just read the media (and internett discussion forums) you would think that Oslo has sharialaws that are policed by huge pakistani gangsters that rape, pillage and steal.

It's easy for the goverment (or parts of it) to look strong in these "trying times" or whatever. That's why they hype it, to keep people afraid. If people are afraid, they turn to strong leaders. It's probably the most effective propaganda format of all time. However, it's a doubleedged sword, beacause tough on crime makes crime tough. And the police cant do jack shit when it comes down to it. Like in Stavanger, where some crazy cop that had watched too much Miami Vice starts blasting at armed robbers. Really smart to start a gunfight when you got a revolver and your opposition got a MP5 or a AK-47.

[Ste]

i've argued with people who seriously believe England will be a muslim country in the next 20 years unless they do something about it. (and by something they probably mean vote BNP or kill some "muzzies" - yeh that's what they're calling them)

[hyfe]

Originally Posted by Snurx

Its like this in Norway too. Crimerates are lowering or at least keeping a steady pace, it's still not dangerous to go out in Oslo, and the muslims are not taking over.

In my hometown, Horten, there were always a lot of fighting. It was however always reasonably confined to the people who played the fighting game. The 'stani gangs in Horten and Tønsberg however would go after anyone if they were in the right mood, and they'd be a lot more interested in scaring people / "gaining respect". So, while you may say overall crime-rates haven't changed, I still hold that society has changed.. and I don't give a crap about statistics, I care about what I experience when I hit town drunk (alternativly, I've gotten older and more easily scared)

It's easy for the goverment (or parts of it) to look strong in these "trying times" or whatever. That's why they hype it, to keep people afraid. If people are afraid, they turn to strong leaders. It's probably the most effective propaganda format of all time.

Are you seriously saying the Norwegian government is hyping fear of foreigners? VG, Dagbladet and the mainstream press is. Right-wing lunatics like KRF (christians) and FRP (populists) certainly are, but they're hardly representative of the 'government'.. and I think their reasoning is a lot more like 'weee, this is easily sellable' rather than any sinister 'we must keep people living in fear'. While despicable and stupid, blame for this lies with the utter retardedness of a lot of people, rather than evil, mad scheming politicians.

If you really think they're trying to make you live in fear, go blow up the parliament or something.. or go knock on the prime-ministers door and punch him the face. Norway's a small country, it ain't hard to get attention

[Ste]

Another article I just read which I found interesting:

Given the opportunity, British men seem to love cross-dressing. From fancy dress to fun runs the first option is the wig and skirt. Is it any wonder that our politicians can't resist the thrill of wearing each other's clothes? Blair copies Thatcher and Cameron seems to ape Blair. But Cameron's claims that "I'm a lady" are deep and troubling for the left.

In politics, only those least likely to do something can actually do it. If only Nixon could go to China then only Blair could embed neoliberalism by daring to go where Thatcher feared to tread, commercialising higher education through tuition fees, schools through trusts and hospitals through foundations.

In a world cut loose from the anchor of ideological politics, exacerbated by first-past-the-post voting, politicians cannot be themselves, becoming instead like their opponents. Parties take their core voters for granted because they have nowhere else to go, and define themselves against their core beliefs.

If Blair dresses to the right, what of Cameron? The jaw-dropping reality just dawning on some Labour politicians is that David Cameron might not simply be Thatcher in trousers. Their iron law of politics - that Tories are always rightwing extremists - is being invalidated before their eyes. Cameron was supposed to be like Hague and Howard, a wolf in sheep's clothing. This suited New Labour's whole electoral strategy because it allowed them to keep trimming to the right, safe in the knowledge the Tories would be more extreme. Sensibly, Cameron refuses to play this game and has opted instead to leapfrog New Labour into the acres of space to the left. This is the world the public lives in.

The Tory leader has accepted the new terms of political debate by promising to stick to government spending plans, putting public services before tax cuts, and has done a "me too" on ending child poverty. But it's his speeches which both reflect and fashion the mood of the nation, attracting zeitgeist symbols - Goldsmith, Geldof and Google - that demand our attention.

Straight after the local elections, Cameron spoke at the Power inquiry conference on the crisis of democracy. He had a potentially hostile audience, but talked with empathy, passion and growing authority on the decline of democracy in a way that no senior Labour politician could match. Equally remarkable was his refusal to mention the council gains his party had made only hours earlier. Instead of cheap point scoring he treated the audience with unremitting respect.

Next came an attack on a shop selling adult underwear to young girls, and last week we had the speech on wellbeing at which he said "the consumer society, despite its undoubted contribution to personal fulfilment, threatens to undermine the values we hold most dear". Explaining the ambivalence we all feel about our need for security and our desire for freedom, he went on to say "there comes a point when you can't keep choosing, you have to commit".

But aren't these just words? Does he mean any of this? We cannot see into his heart to tell - as he repudiates his own voting past. This is a process every New Labour politicians has been through. Cameron knows this is the strategy to win. Unlike his two predecessors he won't retreat back to the nasty Tory heartlands to get the core vote. This leader is not for turning. But it could be more than just an electoral trick.

Means always shape ends. The more Cameron talks himself into new politics the more he must convince himself it's what he believes. Saying is the precursor to doing. And words matter in politics, as they are the way in which leaders are now held to account.

At every left gathering the question is the same, how does this make us different from Cameron? Our critique is that the opposition leader relies on the fads of business to be good. He refuses to recognise and resource the roles of the active state, collective provision and democracy to manage the market, let alone the need for greater equality. He thinks a mix of nice people and a few voluntary clubs will face down capitalism. He is wrong, but only in government will he be found out.

For the moment Cameron's only weapons are words. It's an opportune moment to use them. New Labour's needle is stuck in an early 1990s groove, still desperate not to be anti-business or pro-worker. The problem for New Labour is that it is neither new enough nor Labour enough to speak to the hopes and fears of an increasingly disoriented electorate. Brown is gagged at the Treasury. The field is left to Cameron.

He is making the most of the opportunity, not just by setting the agenda but by helping people to make sense of lives that are increasingly anxious and out of control. It's not the hope of reaching the next rung of the economic ladder that drives people, but the fear of falling into the abyss. What does it say about the Labour party when it's an old Etonian who looks and feels more normal and more in touch than any of the cabinet? Increasingly it seems Cameron wears similar clothes to the British public.

New Labour politicians are in a state of denial about "the Cameron effect". The game has changed as the Tories move beyond Thatcherism, leaving Blairism deep in its shadow. The Tories are not just ahead in the polls, but are viewed as better than Labour on traditional left issues of education and health.

Cameron holds up a mirror to New Labour and reveals to them a nation different to the one they claim to govern. Crucially, he makes it impossible for the government to play the only trick they know - shifting to the right. A Conservative is demonstrating that this isn't a conservative country. The Blairites must feel like Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes when the remnants of the Statue of Liberty shockingly reveal that it wasn't an alien planet after all.

Try this for a thought experiment. What if it's actually in the objective interests of the middle and working classes to vote for Cameron at the next election because New Labour has become so rightwing and out of touch?

The reality is that it is always governments that lose elections. New Labour didn't win as New Labour, but as not being the Tories. They had permission to do much more than they dared. Cameron is trying to ride the same progressive wave that swept New Labour into office. Has the moment been lost for the left? The Cameron challenge means a new left has to move far and fast to deny such a fate. Cameron poses a threat to the left, but also a huge opportunity. People are looking for a rebalancing of their lives between the overbearing demands of the market and their needs as social beings. The good life is only possible if it's good for everyone. This is the terrain only a new left can flourish in.

[JonnyBGood]

Anyone who mentions "our values" gets less respect from me than someone who rapes children.

[Dante Hicks]

Ste, it'd be nice if you put the source of the article too (as it saves Googling).

[Stew]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Ste, it'd be nice if you put the source of the article too (as it saves Googling).

Given it came from Ste, my first port of call would be the Guardian, not Google.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Stew

Given it came from Ste, my first port of call would be the Guardian, not Google.

Google is probably quicker than navigating the Guardian website though.

[Marilyn Manson]

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

Anyone who mentions "our values" gets less respect from me than someone who rapes children.

Child-raping is a one of our core GD values.

[Ste]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Ste, it'd be nice if you put the source of the article too (as it saves Googling).

The problem is, if I do that then people just go " guardian link" without reading.

But yeh, sorry

[JonnyBGood]

Considering the last article explicitly mentioned it was in the guardian you could easily guess that this one, put up an hour or so late, probably was as well.

[Ste]

Well, it seems as if Labour are reacting to tabloid headlines again (again)

The Criminology professor on the news this morning spoke a lot of sense (found here) and I'm just really pissed off at the government yet again