David Agnew

British politicians have converted the UK from a low, to a high crime society.

This post is about getting the crime rate down. The point is not to be original (a lot of the things mentioned have already been mentioned elsewhere on the forum), the point is to be comprehensive; it is therefore quite long.

There is no point in moaning about how hopeless British politicians are with regard to crime (and almost everything else) unless we can spell out precisely how we can undo what they have done. This is how:

To get the crime rate down, it is necessary to do 2 things: 1. Ensure that crime doesn't pay (so that a completely amoral person won't commit crime as it is not in their interests to do so) and 2. Ensure that everyone is brought up in a way that ensures that there are no completely amoral people in the first place.

Ensuring That Crime Doesn't Pay
This in turn requires 2 things: 1. ensuring that the penalty for any crime is greater than the benefit to the criminal, and 2. ensuring that the criminal is caught and required to face the penalty.

Ensuring That The Penalty Is Greater Than The Benefit To The Criminal

Integrate the criminal justice and benefits systems Currently, £300million of fines are going unpaid annually.

Review all sentencing. Currently for example, the fines that professional shoplifters receive are regarded as an acceptable business overhead. Murder should mean life. Stiffen up sentences for causing death by dangerous driving. Give juries sentencing powers. Give the victim a say.

Put the pictures of convicted criminals on the internet. Adjust the tags of shoplifters so that they set off shop alarms.

As far as possible, criminals should be required to undo the harm that they have done personally. For example grafitti 'artists' should be required to publicly clean off grafitti (at their own expense).

Investigate all criminal assets Where a criminal has committed a crime where financial gain is the motive, all their assets should be investigated. Anything that they cannot prove has been acquired legally should be confiscated. (I think that the government has started doing this with drug dealers).

There should be a loss of 'citizenship rights' Until a conviction is 'spent' the criminal should lose 1. the right to vote (is that the case now?), their passpost, and the right to a lottery jackpot should they win it.

Make sentences run consecutively. Why is it that often persistent criminals are on the loose? (eg the murderer of that BBC costume designer turned out to have a string of convictions as long as your arm. If he had been in prison, she would still be alive). Get the repeat offenders off the streets.

Build More Prisons Currently, prisoners usually serve only half their sentences. This is because of a lack of prison space. So build more prisons (in the meantime see if there is any spare prison space abroad). Prisoners should serve their full sentence, with extra time for bad behaviour.

Prison Reform As far as protecting the public is concerned, prison is unbeatable, but when they come out prisoners often reoffend. Therefore in prison there should be: 1. Compulsory literacy training for the illiterate (they would therefore be better equiped to go straight) 2. Lots of work. Prisons should be self-funding as far as possible. Prisoners would then develop a work habit (and they would be given a reference on release). 3. Free of all drugs. If this means denying physical contact with visitors, so be it.

Remand prisoners should not be in prisons for convicted prisoners. There should be single cells (there have been cases of prisoners murdering their cellmates). A prisoner should be assigned a category before sentencing, to avoid having prisoners of different categories mixed together before getting alocated to a prison.

Also, prison should be clean but spartan (like a modern monastery - so no TVs or radios). All long sentences should finish with 2 months in an open prison, so that prisoners can 'find their feet' in the community.



Ensuring That The Criminal Is Caught And Requrired To Face The Penalty

Elect Chief Constables (and judges) They are supposed to be our police after all. It would keep them on their toes.

Use proactive policing The police should use extensive 'Swag' style sting operations against criminals so that a criminal can never be sure that the car that they are thinking of breaking into, or the house that they are thinking of burgling isn't a police trap. This would be an efficient way of getting criminals off the streets and INTO phpbb_prison.

Reform the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984) Apparently arresting somebody now takes up 5 hours of police time. This is a major deterrent to arresting anybody.

Put the police back on the beat Everybody wants this, and the politicians talk about it, but not a lot happens. When more police were deployed on the streets after the London bombings, street crime fell by 25%. Well, surprise surprise. Police numbers have never been higher, so where are the police? Actually, I can answer that question: they are in the copshop filling out forms.

I can name the local vicar and the local doctor, but I have no idea who the local policeman is, or even if there is one. Even though they would be unlikely to interrupt a crime as it happens, they would be nearby if a crime is reported, they deter crime by their presence, and they provide reassurance to the public.

Introduce zero tolerance policing. The politicians talk about this, but I have seen no evidence that it has been put INTO phpbb_action.

Use available technology Put all babies on the DNA database as a matter of course. Eventually this would ensure that all rape cases are solved. It would also help in finding absent parents. Instal AVT. Allow the use of phone tap evidence in court.

Bring back the property qualification for juries Juries should be intelligent and responsible. There is no guarentee that property owners are intelligent and responsible, but the current situation is not very good.




Ensuring That Nobody Wants To Be a Criminal In The First Place

The above measures would dramatically cut the crime rate, but for a long term and genuinely low crime rate, a change of culture is required.

I am not a criminal. This is not because I am so rich that I don't want more stuff, or that I fear the law, it is because I was brought up to believe that crime is wrong. If everyone was brought up the same way as me, there would be no crime. The state should attack the culture of crime. State action can change cultures; for example the British drink/drive culture was changed by state action. Arguably, the British strike culture of the 1970s was also changed by government action. So why do British governments refuse to attack the culture of crime? The state should:

Support the family: The correlation between crime and family breakup is strong.

Create strict liability for the parents of criminal children This should undermine the culture of parental irresponsibility that exists at the moment. It should also apply to absent parents

Restorative Justice. For all first offences, the criminal should as far as possible be required to meet, apologise to, and personally compensate their victim. Nobody should be able to embark on a career in crime without knowing what the impact of their criminal activity is on others. (Obviously, for the hardened criminal, restorative justice is a waste of time).

Stop supporting 'multi-culturalism' The perception that all cultures are equal is wrong. For example the culture of absentee fathers amongst people of Caribbean ancestry is highly damaging. Contrast this with the strong family values of Jewish culture.

Bring back discipline in schools At the nursery and primary levels, schooling should be as much about forming character as about education.

House arrest for juvenile criminals. Whenever a juvenile offender leaves their home they will be accompanied. If not by a parent then by a probation officer. It would then be impossible to commit further crimes, it would also be a strong deterrent. It would be expensive to do this, but no more expensive than juvenile detention centres: 'colleges of crime'. This would put a stop to the phenomenon of the 'one boy crime wave' It should stop children embarking on a life of crime.

Other Points

Voluntary prisoners Strange but true; there really are people who commit crime because they want to go to prison. Firstly there are 'bagmen', people who are unable to function outside an institutional environment. For these people create voluntary prison. Also there are drug addicts who want to go to prison because they can get immediate detox treatment in prison. Outside they have to wait 10 weeks or more for detox treatment on the NHS. Therefore create detox clinics without waiting lists.

Laws that invite crime Because British governments have set tobacco, alcohol and petrol taxes higher than continental levels, they are not only losing a lot of revenue from people legally buying abroad, they are losing even more revenue from smuggling. The solution is simple: cut these taxes to continental levels or lower. Also, raise and then enforce motorway speed limits.

Legalise and tax drugs The drugs laws are the ultimate invitation to crime. The legalisation (through medicalisation) and taxation of drugs would half the crime rate overnight.

Screen immigrants for criminal records. Allow an immigrant to be stripped of his British citizenship and deported if he turns to crime.


That just about covers it, don't you think?