Modern policing and Crime

You should read David Copperfield and his "The Policeman's Blog" - "A Journey into the mad, mad world of the British underclass and the Public sector, where nothing is too insane for it to be written down and copied in triplicate...This blog will do more to put people off calling the police than anything, other than actually calling the police." I do and I even purchased and read his book last year - "Wasting Police Time", an excellent read and one that I will be quoting from on my blog in the future.

David Copperfield also wrote an article for Friday's Daily Telegraph which included the following section the emphasis is mine:
"The police force, once trusted by the majority of decent folk, is fast becoming a joke. So why are we arresting people for throwing cucumber sandwiches or chalking on the pavement?

It's all about detections, and a big fraud that the Government is perpetrating on taxpayers. In our fast-moving society, people like simple headline figures; in 2005-6, the headline was that 27 per cent of crimes were detected.

Not much to brag about, but at least it's not absolutely pathetic. But look a little deeper.

We didn't detect 27 per cent of all burglaries, or 27 per cent of all assaults, or 27 per cent of all of the mindless acts of vandalism that went on - the kind where you wake up to find your car's wing mirror hanging on by its wires.

The actual burglary detection rate was 13 per cent (of which 40 per cent were "TICs" - offences "taken into consideration" - where an offender confesses to other crimes to get them off his slate).

In order to allow the Government to trumpet that 27 per cent headline (and to meet another key government requirement, that of "offenders brought to justice" - target, 1.25 million for 2007-8), the detections include lots of playground hair-pullings, minor school scuffles and over-the-fence rows.

So, we're arresting children, the perennially stupid, and the generally law-abiding over ludicrous matters in order to meet targets and cover up the fact that streetwise burglars and muggers are almost guaranteed to get away scot-free.


This links in with a passage that I just read in Peter Hitchen's book, "The Abolition of Liberty", when he is talking about how we now treat crime (the emphasis is mine) - "As the symptom of a social and economic disease, requiring treatment rather than penalties.. (so) the more the state will need to become an apparatus of repression. The more the police are required to treat individual offenders with care and consideration, the more the law abiding population will have to be restrained by the authorities from taking action in their own defence. The less free ordinary citizens are to use their initiative in dealing with wrongdoers, the more they will yearn to do so. The more bureaucratic and formal the criminal justice system becomes, the less use it will be against the disorderly and disobedient. Such people treat a prison record as a career risk, do not pay fines (huge amounts are uncollected, although the middle classes still tend to pay), fail to turn up at court or do not stay long at the same address. It is then simpler and more convenient for the police to pursue the settled and orderly members of society. They are easy to find, can have their regular earnings raided to pay fines and fear the stigma of a criminal record."

One phrase there reminds me of a quotation from a much earlier time, this is the narration at the start of every episode of Porridge (again the emphasis is mine) - "Norman Stanley Fletcher, you have pleaded guilty to the charges brought by this court, and it is now my duty to pass sentence. You are an habitual criminal, who accepts arrest as an occupational hazard, and presumably accepts imprisonment in the same casual manner. We therefore feel constrained to commit you to the maximum term allowed for these offences — you will go to prison for five years." That expression always made feel a little scared when I was growing up, how could someone really accept imprisonment so casually as an occupational hazard, were there really such people in the world. Unfortunately, today there are more and more of such people and we are not able to deter them by the prospect of detection or punishment.


This realisation has left many with an increasingly jaundiced view of the police who are increasingly viewed by their natural supporters as being a threat to their freedom rather than as protectors against crime. This means that scenes such as this recorded in Derbyshire become so popular to watch - If the police seek to curtail our freedoms whilst not deterring those who rob, mug and threaten us, then we will enjoy them being taken down a peg or two.