Targeting works (which is why ASBOs and PSPOs are ineffective, lazy, divisive policing)

"Broken window" theory (or, to use its pompous operational name, "order maintenance policing") is the idea that lies behind a lot of modern policing including, in the UK anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) and public space protection orders (PSPOs):

In essence, Kelling and Wilson argued that latent danger loomed everywhere, and everywhere people’s disorderly impulses needed to be repressed, or else. Their “broken windows theory” didn’t stay theoretical: Also known as order maintenance policing, this tactic propelled an entire generation of policing practice that sought to crack down on minor “quality-of-life” infractions as a way to stem violence.

The problem is that, as research now shows, all this sounds good but doesn't work - a great deal of time and money is invested in the idea that anti-social behaviour (essentially annoying but non-criminal acts) and petty crime are gateway drugs to more serious crime and that we should target deprived areas using aggressive approaches like stop-and-search, arrests for petty misdemeanours and large scale area campaigns. This, in most developed countries, inevitably means targeting areas with concentrations of minority residents (black or Hispanic in the USA, black or South Asian in the UK) leading to understandable allegations of racism and high degrees of mistrust in police and criminal justice.

What Stephen Lurie, Alexis Acevedo, & Kyle Ott have shown is that serious crime (they focus on violent crime) is much more concentrated socially than 'broken window theory" allows:

...in over 20 cities, we found that less than 1 percent of a city’s population—the share involved in what we call “street groups” (gangs, sets, and crews)—is generally connected to over 50 percent of the city’s shootings and homicides. We use “group” as a term inclusive of any social network involved in violence, whether they are hierarchical, formal gangs, or loose neighborhood crews. In city after city, the very small number of people involved in these groups consistently perpetrated and were victimized by the most serious violence.

We are talking about really small numbers of people - Lurie describes how:

This held true even in areas considered chronically “dangerous,” like parts of East Baltimore. There, the group member population totaled only three quarters of a percentage point, even as they were connected to 58.43 percent of homicides. Shootings tend to be even more concentrated than homicides. In Minneapolis, we found that 0.15 percent of the population was determined to be involved in groups, but this population was connected to 53.96 percent of shootings—a proportion over 350 times higher than their population representation.

The conclusion here is that we need to do two things: target resources (policing and other interventions) towards the very small numbers responsible for most of the mayhem, and spend some time explaining to the wider public that 99% of young people living in deprived areas with high crime levels are not criminals or even likely to become criminals. Right now with ASBOs, PSPOs and extensions of stop-and-search we are doing the opposite. These strategies act to give the impression to people in these areas that the police and public authorities do not trust them and consider them likely criminals. It is no surprise, then, that these communities - often minority communities - don't co-operate with the police or other public authorities.

We should scrap ASBOs, PSPOs and the whole structure of anti-social behaviour measures and direct resources towards targeting the small number of (mostly) young men who are responsible for most of the violence, burglary, robbery and assaults in our cities.

....

Is terrorism more driven by identity than extremist ideology?

How do you define, in the context of free speech, extremism? Is extremism a belief, opinion or world view beyond arbitrarily defined societal norms or merely an exaggerated response or attachment to a given ideological position? The general view is that extremism is the former:

“Extremism is the vocal or active opposition to our fundamental values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and respect and tolerance for different faiths and beliefs. We also regard calls for the death of members of our armed forces as extremist.”

This comes from the UK government's counter extremism strategy, a document that gives rise to the much-criticised Prevent strategy which "...explicitly makes a causal link between ideology, extremist thought, and extremist actions." The criticism of Prevent has, in the main, been that it appears to (unfairly) target Muslim communities but there is a strong defence for the Home Office here since, not only are the majority of UK terrorist incidents associated with Islamist extremism but the proportion of Muslims identified through the programme has been falling:

The published figures also suggest the Home Office has developed more sophisticated methods of categorising risk. This has implications for improving relations with British Muslim communities. Previously, the Home Office relied on four categories of concern: “Islamist extremism”, “right-wing extremism”, “other extremism” and “unspecified”. Now a new category has been created: “mixed, unstable, or unclear ideology”. This increased willingness to consider disparate or uncertain motivations coincides with a reduction in the proportion of Islamic extremism referrals – down from 61% in 2016-17 to 44% in 2017-18 – and offers the grounds for tentative optimism.

The problem with Prevent (and other anti-extremism strategies) is, however, rather deeper than just the perception from one or other community that they're being targeted. The programme assumes that extremism is the result of radicalisation - “grooming and exploitation by terrorists” as the UK's security minister, Ben Wallace put it. The problem, as conflict expert, Dr Mike Martin observes is:

This understanding of the role of belonging should be considered alongside the facts that an overwhelming majority of those with extremist thoughts, far more than 99%, do not commit violent actions. What’s more, extremist thought, even were it adequately definable in a society that values free speech, is a very poor predictor of violent action. Defining extremism in this way lumps the supposed thinkers of extremism together with those targeted by the government for their criminal activity – actors of extremism.

Martin goes on to suggest that, because we have terrorism cause and effect in the wrong order (terrorists use extremist ideology to justify their violence rather than the ideology being the reason for that violence - this applies as much to animal rights violence as it does to Muslim terrorism) the Prevent strategy, far from reducing terrorism actually risks creating terrorists:

By seeking to find and punish those who harbour extremist thought, the actions of the government cause people to question their place in British society, when they might not have done so before. In short, it creates or exacerbates a crisis of belonging, even where one might not have existed.

I'm not entirely convinced by Martin's argument but it is (unlike the Prevent strategy) grounded in some good science and should be given due consideration. We need also to consider why it is that the government is so specific about some extremism ("right-wing" and "Muslim" but not "left-wing" or "vegan") as if only some ideologies are linked to terrorism. Which is odd given the long history of left-wing violence and the current spate of attacks founded on veganism or animal rights.

Two things strike me about Prevent's weakness (and Dr Martin's argument) - first that radicalisation may not create terrorism but it does provide a home for terrorism, and second that the boundary between terrorist and non-terrorist crime is very blurred especially when we come to individual acts of violence such as the murder of Jo Cox MP. For the first issue, however, we cannot be selective about ideology - it's perfectly possible to see how, in the current febrile Brexit environment, how pro-EU "extremists" could commit acts of violence (the doorstepping of Jacob Rees-Mogg gets ever closer to this, for example). Which brings us to the free speech question - who is defining what we mean by extreme. Is having a FBPE hashtag extremist?

In the second instance - when is violence classed as terrorism - we have to start with some sort of political or politio-religious rationale for the violence. So the man who murdered Jo Cox, because he appeared to have a political motive, is a terrorist whereas the man who killed Andy Pennington, aide to then Cheltenham MP, Nigel Jones, was not a terrorist because his motive was personal rather than ideological. The question Dr Martin poses is whether our distinction between these two murders is artificial. Jo Cox's murderer used extremist ideology to rationalise his act of murder leading to us seeking out radicalisation (literature, websites, far right organisation) as the problem rather than more personal motives.

I'll finish with Dr Martin's conclusion because it speaks to this very problem, to the personal rather than to the organised exploitation of people through radicalisation:

Globalisation, and particularly immigration, has detached people from the groups they once belonged to: their families, their ethnicities, and their nations. The modern world can be a profoundly lonely place. If individuals feel that they don’t belong, they are more likely to reach out for extreme ideas that will fill that vacuum, offering them a sense of identity.

It seems that our sense of identity - and the feeling that this identity is being denied or excluded - has more to do with terrorism than ideology or the promotion of ideology.

....

Don't lock 'em up - prison doesn't work

It is an understandable response to crime - lock 'em up, throw away the key. The problem is that this visceral desire to punish doesn't do much to deter and, so it seem, fails in its most obvious objective, reducing crime:

Current policy debates suggest that state prosecutors may have been a key force behind the historic rise in US incarceration. This paper investigates how state prosecutors of differing political affiliations influence county-level incarceration. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation generated by close elections, I find that Republican prosecutorial offices sentence defendants to longer incarceration spells as compared to their Democratic and Independent counterparts. This increase in incarceration length is driven by longer sentences for both violent and property offenses, and translates into a persistent increase in incarceration. These sentencing and incarceration enhancements do not lower crime at the county level, indicating that, in terms of public safety, the marginal return to the tough-on-crime stance may be close to zero.

OK, it's just one study (and one that's a little too politically-loaded for my taste) but it concurs with findings from less partisan studies that consistently show incarceration, "tough" sentence and rigorous sanctions regimes have negative effects on recidivism. Here's the UK government's findings:

Short-term custody (less than 12 months in prison, without supervision on release) was consistently associated with higher rates of proven re-offending than community orders and suspended sentence orders (‘court orders’)

For this group of criminals, prison just doesn't work. Indeed it doesn't just not reduce crime, it increases the chance that one-time criminals become career criminals. Norway has pretty much the world's lowest rate of recidivism (less than 20% compared to the UK's 70%). The Norwegian approach to imprisonment is part of the reason:

The thinking is that justice for society is best served by releasing prisoners who are less likely to reoffend. The Norwegian penal philosophy is that traditional, repressive prisons do not work, and that treating prisoners humanely improves their chances of reintegrating in society.7 This is achieved by a “guiding principle of normality,” meaning that with the exception of freedom of movement, prisoners retain all other rights and life in the prison should resemble life on the outside to the greatest extent possible.8 Within the walls of Halden, one of the newest maximum-security prisons in Norway, are cells with flat-screen televisions and mini-fridges, long windows to let in more sunlight, and shared living rooms and kitchens “to create a sense of family,” according to Hans Henrik Hoilund, one of the prison’s architects. Prisoners are not left to their own devices upon release, either. There is a safety net. The government guarantees it will do everything possible to ensure that released prisoners have housing, employment, education, as well as health care and addiction treatment, if needed.

I know you're all horrified but shouldn't we look to what seems to work rather than lock more and more young men up in overcrowded, ill-managed, drug-riddled prisons? If community sentences work (i.e. mean less recidivism, less crime and safer communities) we should use them more and, if short prison sentences don't work, we should use them less. We also need to create the space and time to straighten out those who we do lock up and if this means prisons being a more pleasant environment then that's what we should do.

...

Immigrants (even illegal ones) don't commit more crimes...

Of course, you all know this (just as you knew immigrants are more likely to work, pay a higher proportion of earnings in tax, are less likely to be ill and don't receive as much welfare - they also have fewer children so make less use of schools) but the continuing rhetoric about immigration - migrants, refugees, asylum seekers - still talks about such folk as a problem.

Here's the evidence on crime (it's from the US - one of those nasty right wing think tanks, no less - but I don't expect it to be much different elsewhere):

Previous empirical studies of immigrant criminality generally find that immigrants do not increase local crime rates, are less likely to cause crime than their native-born peers, and are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans.5 Illegal immigrant incarceration rates are not well studied; however, recent Cato Institute research based on data from the Texas Department of Public Safety found that, as a percentage of their respective populations, illegal immigrants represented 56 percent fewer criminal convictions than native-born Americans in Texas in 2015.6 The low illegal immigrant incarceration rate is consistent with other research that finds more targeting of immigrants does not reduce the crime rate, which would occur if they were more crime prone than natives.7

The reality is that, almost everywhere, the net benefit from immigration is positive. Our problem is that we're full or that immigrants put massive additional strain on public services but rather that we're really bad at integrating new residents into local communities. Some of this is about racism but it's also a consequence of multiculturalism - in a society where nine out of ten people live in one culture, making a false equivalence for immigrants with a different culture won't work. And when that false equivalence becomes an obsession, the result is resentful behaviour by the majority culture.

Immigration is great but it would be even better if our expectation of immigrants was to be part of our culture not to live what Herman Ouseley called "parallel lives".


....

It seems it's now policy not to make arrests (or a clip round the ear)

Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It's just our bringin' up-ke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, natcherly we're punks!

Arrests have fallen in the UK by nearly a half. The police, unsurprisingly, blame this on reduced "resources" but it is worth noting that there are not 50% fewer coppers - not even the more deranged parts of the Labour Party are making that claim - so you can't lay fewer arrests at the door of so-called "austerity".

I guess this is a better reason:

“Officers are also encouraged to deal with offending behaviour proportionately and effectively, maximising public involvement, keeping people out of the criminal justice system and supporting reduced re-offending behaviour through positive intervention.”

It is now policy not to arrest people and for the police to behave a bit like a cross between a social worker and Judge Dredd - dealing with "offending behaviour" rather than catching criminals as used to be the case. This might be seen as a welcome return to the old-fashioned "clip round the ear" approach to policing where the coppers visited low level summary justice on badly behaved youth rather than arresting them. I've a fear, however, that the process of arrest, charge and the criminal justice process is such a nightmare of paperwork and mind-numbing bureaucracy that not arresting bad 'uns just makes the coppers' lives easier. What I do know is that, for all the "gee, Officer Krupke" banter, there's precious little evidence of this sort of policing "reducing reoffending behaviour".

I've always taken a care to listen to the explanations I get from the police and I also appreciate that the burglars aren't things of their creation but this mealy-mouthed, bureaucrat speak about how the police work seems to cover up an almost abject failure to do what the public wants - robust, hard, policing that targets the vicious, greedy young men who commit the crimes and upset the lives of decent, law-abiding people. It certainly doesn't appear to the majority of folk that the police are either present in their community or responsive to the needs of that place. Today's police seem to be stuck in cars, draped with ever more bits of kit and, when you get to speak with them, talking in an almost impenetrable language quite unlike how regular folk speak about criminals and crime.

The police have the time and resource to get filmed dancing at pride marches but not to respond promptly to a burglary at a frightened elderly couple's house, put more publicity behind getting people to report bad language on social media, and police "senior leaders" hide behind bureaucracy to excuse their failures. Blaming a 50% drop in arrests on resourcing is, quite simply, a lie but nobody is looking chief constables and crime commissioners in the eye and saying "pull the other one, mate". Yes more money for policing might be a good idea but only if that money gets spent on actual policing not a bureaucratic, politically correct pastiche of policing.

.....

Unpopularism (some policy thoughts for conservatives)

There's a media caricature of conservatism as being a sort of red-faced, reactionary creed. And, at times, we do sound like the angry bloke at the bar as he moves from beer onto double whiskies - "send 'em home, stop 'em coming, hang 'em, flog 'em, blame the parents, close the borders, scroungers, layabouts, druggies". For all of his modest manner, politeness and media-savvy approach, this is pretty much how a lot of folk see the Rees-Mogg tendency.

Now I really am a conservative, probably more of one now than I've ever been, and this means that we need to take one of David Cameron's cute observations - "there is such a thing as society, it's just not the same as the state" - and ask what is means in terms of policy. We should also recognise that our social problems seem to be pretty resistant to both the left liberal's "give everyone a nice hug" approach and the reactionary's "kick them up the pants, the lazy oiks" policy platform.

Anyway it seems to me that we should start thinking about those social problems - social mobility, inequality in health and education, housing, community, crime - as conservatives. We should also draw on the actual evidence as to what underlies the problems and how a conservative outlook can make a big difference. None of what follows is economic policy, all of it is intended to strengthen social bonds, reduce barriers between people and places, and provide some pointers to a society based more on the idea of community than the one we have right now.

Crime and Punishment 1 -Shut down prisons. We lock up too many young men and, in particular, young men from less privileged backgrounds. This isn't just bad for those young men, it's bad for their partners, their children and for society. We should stop doing this, close down a load of prisons and make prison more effective. Prison doesn't work as a deterrent and acts to destroy families while damaging society still further.

Crime and Punishment 2 - Legalise pot. If your place is like mine, then hardly a day passes without a proud announcement from the local police about another cannabis farm they've found. Have you noticed how this is reducing the number of folk smoking weed? No? We're losing the war on drugs. With appropriate safeguards, licences and taxes legalised cannabis (and maybe some other drugs too) would immediately end a huge criminal enterprise with all its attendant violence and unpleasantness.

Families 1 - Pay childcare to mums (or dads). We're spending billions (getting on for £10 billion) on providing parents with childcare subsidy. Since the evidence tells us that full-time, attentive parenting is the best development environment for a toddler, we should make that money we currently pay to nurseries and pre-schools also available to mums or dads who opt to stay at home to raise their toddlers.

Families 2 - Divorce reform. OK, we're better off than the Americans as we don't have 'no fault' divorce but it's still probably too easy to get a divorce especially where there are children. We should reform the system so that the interests of children is central to any decision. And those interests must be guided by the evidence telling us that being raised by a single parent is one of the best ways to screw the life chances of those children.

Families 3 - Incentivise marriage. You know why we have marriage? Love and all that jazz innit. Nope - marriage exists to stop men leaving once they've fathered a child. And forget all the religion stuff - every single society on earth has marriage in one form or another. Marriage works because is places a social stigma (sometimes enforced by a familial big stick) on men who abandon women with children. As the evidence on life chances for children born outside marriage tells us, not having married parents is bad for children. We should incentivise marriage through the tax system and, for the least well off, introduce a specific benefit payable to married couples.

Education 1 - school place lotteries. Grammar schools are one of our things as Conservatives. We love them despite the evidence telling us that they make barely a jot of difference to overall educational attainment or social mobility. If we want working class kids to do better then we have to mix them with middle class (and posh) kids rather than, de facto, herding them into separate schools because of social sorting by house price. So rather than grammar schools, let's have school place lotteries thereby creating better social mix in schools to the benefit of those working class kids.

Education 2 - fund more extra-curricula activity. Non-classroom stuff is really important - sport, music, art, debating, clubs - and we've been gradually squeezing it out (mostly by pulling funding and expecting parents to pay). We should fund activity like music, dance and school sport directly and pay the teachers who support extra-curricula activity more money.

Health - merge 'clinical commissioning groups' into local councils. Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are the bodies that hold local budgets for the NHS. We've already created 'Health and Wellbeing Boards' to make them at least talk with the local council. We should go further and put all the health and care commissioning under the local council - it would be more accountable, more transparent and might result in some creative, community-based health initiatives.

Housing 1 - scrap the 'green belt'. All the evidence, wherever you look in the world, tells us that policies constraining the supply of land in large, growing cities result in unaffordable housing. Let's abolish anti-suburb, anti-sprawl policies and focus instead on a planning system that actually protects special, beautiful, and environmentally-important land rather than a huge blanket consisting mostly of agricultural monoculture with all its attendant ecological negatives. This won't make housing cheap overnight but it will set a direction for more supply of land, more homes being built, more variety and a chance for young people to aspire to own a home.

Housing 2 - extend the right-to-buy. Right-to-Buy was the single biggest transfer of wealth from government to people in our history. We need to extend right-to-buy to all social housing with similar incentives to those offered to council tenants in the 1980s. And we should give tenants of privately rented homes the right to buy when a landlord seeks to sell the property - again with a discount similar to that offered to social tenants.

And finally - scrap beer duty for drinks sold in pubs. The pub is the heart of the community - how often does some politician tell us this (usually while having their picture taken with campaigners opposing yet another pub closure). Well pubs are places where people drink beer, that's their primary purpose. So why, if pubs are so bloody important, do we slap a massive additional tax on those drinkers? Scrap the beer duty (and probably duty on cider and wine but not spirits) for the on-trade.

As I said - unpopularism?

....

Crime and gentrification...

We were all utterly shocked to discover that, for the first part of 2018, the rate of murder in London was worst than that once Capital of Crime, New York City:

London police investigated more murders than their New York counterparts did over the last two months, statistics show, as the British capital’s mayor vowed to fight a “violent scourge” on the streets.

Now, setting aside that New York is probably still worse than London despite its impressive decline in crime, there might be a reason for this - gentrification or, if you prefer it "positive income sorting":

These metros are expensive because they have restricted their supply of new housing even as they continue to generate strong demand for it. As a result, homebuyers and renters in these metros compete with each other over a smaller housing stock, bidding up prices, and pushing out those who are the least financially able. The high cost of housing also deters potential in-migrants, especially if their incomes are low, which drives up the income levels of those who are ultimately observed moving in. Of course, homeowners and certain fortunate renters can stay put in their homes for a long time, even when they can no longer afford them at current prices, so positive income sorting can be a slow process.

That's from housing economist, Issi Romem in an article that's nothing to do with crime. But it seems to me that, as places become wealthier and more exclusive at scale the sort of people who are more likely to commit crime (young, male, less well-educated, lower social class) simply aren't there to commit the crime. What Romem found, however, was that cities with more socially fair housing policies maintained a balance (the income and social class of in-migrants matched that of out-migrants), which is perhaps great for a wide range of other social factors but less good for crime rates. It's a thought.

....

In the end bans usually make things worse - the case of cigarettes

The problem with banning things is that it seldom stops them. Even when you take the sort of extreme and violent steps we've seen recently in The Philipines. Yet politicians, policy-makers and their friends in academia still champion bans - de facto or de jure.

One of those bans - although it doesn't look like one because no-one's passed a law with the word 'ban' in it anywhere except Bhutan - is that of tobacco. This is a ban by stealth implemented by steadily raising the price of fags to the point where more and more people can't afford to buy them. Or at least this is the theory.

The problem is that the bigger the gap between the cost of production and the post-tax retail price, the bigger the incentive for people to (illegally) arbitrage that gap. Why take the risk smuggling heroin or cocaine when you can smuggle tobacco! Check out your local paper and you'll see a steady stream of stories about illegal cigarettes (interspersed with stories about cannabis factories). With each increase in tobacco duty, we see an increase in criminal activity around tobacco.

And this is where it ends up - with violence:

The BAT manager was stabbed and bashed by at least three men, after he refused their order that he get into a car. The kidnappers arrived at the man's Sydney home at around 10pm on Saturday June 4.

A source said the manager was forced to "fight for his life" to ward off the kidnappers, who have not been identified. He was rushed to hospital after the attack.

The attack appears to be an unprecedented escalation in the struggle between policing agencies and the syndicates driving the illicit tobacco trade. Evidence suggests the attack was linked to BAT's support of police inquiries.

The manager in question was employed (by that source of all evil, a tobacco company) to support the police in investigating smuggling and illegal tobacco. Why? Quite simply because it's a billion dollar plus criminal business.

Right now, our one-eyed approach to smoking is creating a new international criminal business smuggling cigarettes and tobacco. In the UK, trading standards departments are advised that tobacco companies are the bad boys:

Tobacco companies continue to approach local authorities and local Trading Standards teams in particular with offers to support their tobacco control strategies primarily around tackling illicit tobacco but also in relation to other areas of enforcement including age of sale regulations. Local Authorities are recommended to examine such offers critically in the light of Article 5.3 and its guidelines and only engage in any collaborative work with the industry where this is considered strictly necessary.

That's right folks - the Tackling Illicit Tobacco for Better Health Partnership (essentially a bunch of trading standards officers) thinks it just fine to refuse to work with tobacco companies - businesses selling a legal product - in catching criminals.

So what we have is a new and lucrative business for organised criminals created entirely by policies designed to promote public health. And, rather than recognise the problem, public health and its agents refuse to co-operate with the tobacco companies in reducing the criminal impact of their (public health that is) policies.

Now I call this stupid.
...

The most striking thing about these figures is how low they are...

****

Bradford's Telegraph & Argus has revealed the findings from a 'freedom of information' request relating to the number of offences recorded at individual licenced premises in the city. Now we should note that the approved narrative when discussing crime and drinking is to use terms like 'drink-fuelled violence and anti-social behaviour' accompanied by a load and judgemental implied 'tut'.

So how much crime is there - of any sort - recorded at Bradford's busy city centre pubs and clubs? The answer - although the newspaper doesn't report it quite this way - is close to bugger all. The worst venue - a busy bar/nightclub - witnessed a staggering 23 offences during the year to 26 March 2015. That is less than one a fortnight. Given the bewildering array of possible offences (at times it seems the police can arrest anyone for anything) available to the enforcement authorities we should, rather than tutting about crime, be celebrating just how incredible safe Bradford's night life has become.

The truth is that, with violent crime at the lowest levels since the 1970s and consumption of alcohol (whatever the health fascists want to pretend) at similarly low levels, going out on a evening in a place like Bradford is pretty safe. Of course this isn't the same as saying it's pleasant but that's an aesthetic judgement not a matter of personal security - there will be plenty of swearing, oodles of testosterone and plenty of drunkenness but what there won't be is that violent crime the police and other assorted nannying fussbuckets want you to believe is inevitable wherever people (and especially young people) gather to party.

We should be celebrating - with a large drink, of course - the fact that licensing reform and the promotion of sensible drinking has resulted in a turnaround in the safety of our town centres. Instead newspapers in search of a cheap headline, scaremongering politicians and assorted fussbuckets still present it as if our town centres are places of untrammelled behaviour, dangerous places of utter chaos. This is complete nonsense. But I guess that's always sold newspapers!

....

Crime down, drinking down but more licenced premises. Hogan Howe is talking authoritarian rubbish.

****

The Hillsborough enquiry reveals how police called for dogs rather than ambulances and every new day reveals another example of the police failing to respond to cases of child sexual abuse - given this it would be a good idea if the leaders of the police showed a little humility and addressed themselves to the enormous lump of timber in their eye rather than mounting yet another illiberal assault on private businesses.

“We need to make sure there is good control of the supply of alcohol. This means licence numbers, density and licensee-regulation being a priority for local authorities, however much they would like to develop their local economies.

“We know that many injuries occur inside or outside licensed premises, and if we can close down repeat offenders, we will.

“But do we really need as many licensed premised chasing limited business. The system needs reform and we need to police it better.”

This from the same jumped up little fascist who called for CCTV in every home, wants water cannon to deal with disorder and who leads an unaccountable, dysfunctional paramilitary force.

The failings an inadequacies of police leadership and management are legion. It's not just the high profile cases - Hillsborough, the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes or child abuse in Rotherham - it's an every day in every community problem.

In answer to "Britain's Top Cop" as the tabloids would call him - no we don't need more control over the supply of alcohol. You already have all the powers you need to deal with drunks, to respond to badly managed pubs and to manage the effects of alcohol in our communities.

Britain has about 204,000 licensed premises a figure that has risen by some 3% over the last five years. And during that period our consumption of alcohol has continued to fall - it has dropped nearly 20% over the last decade. So it's no surprise that violent crime is now at its lowest level for over 30 years:

The CSEW covers a broad range of victim based crimes and includes crimes which do not come to the attention of the police. Decreases were evident for all major crime types compared with the previous year; violence saw a 23% fall, criminal damage fell by 20%, and theft offences decreased by 12%.

This represents a 16% decrease compared with the previous year’s survey, and is the lowest estimate since the survey began in 1981.

I for one am completely fed up with top police officers making out that there's a problem where there isn't while at the same time making excuses for the complete failure of the police to deal with a real problem such as child sexual exploitation.

....

"Yet in thy dark streets shineth, The everlasting Light." - thoughts on crime and streetlighting.

****

It's the longest night of the year (or pretty close to it) so what better choice of subject for a Labour Party press release than the practice of councils - as a cost and carbon saving measure - turning off or dimming street lighting. Unsurprisingly the Labour chap doesn't like this:

Labour’s shadow communities secretary, Hilary Benn, warned that ‘significant areas’ of the country were being ‘plunged into darkness as a result of David Cameron and Eric Pickles’ policies’. ‘Streetlights ensure that people are safe on our roads and feel safe walking home, especially at this time of the year when the nights have drawn in,’...

And I'm guessing that you will probably have a similar response after all as Roger Ekirch, author of 'The City Dark' observed:

...humans have long feared the dark, and...crime was the original impetus for widespread street lighting on the planet. 

The cloaked figure skulking in the shadows, of the thief using the cover of darkness for his crimes and the frisson of terror as we scoot past the entrance to the dark alley on the walk home - these are what comes to mind when we consider the dark. Nighttime is when evil does its thing, the domain of the robber, the murderer and the thief. So Hilary Benn, by appealing to this instinct is playing good politics.

The problem is that it's just not as simple as this - the link between the dark and actual crime (as opposed to actual fear of crime) really isn't a clear cut as Benn's comments make it out.

...some research indicates that an increase in number and brightness of streetlights actually increases the occurrence of crime, noting that street lighting allows perpetrators to monitor their own actions without the use of flashlights or other lighting devices that would make them visible to others. A case has also been made that offenders need lighting to detect potential targets and low-risk situations.

Indeed there is a catalogue of evidence suggesting that additional lighting has at best a marginal effect on levels of crime, that most crime takes place during daylight hours or where there is good artificial lighting, and that there is a point (accepting some crime reduction benefit) when lighting makes no difference.  After all there is some logic - assuming your typical criminal can't see in the dark - to the observation that ne'er-do-wells need light just as much as us law-abiding folk.

None of this is to suggest that turning off the lights is always a good idea or that the installation of better lighting (such as the LED lights we now have in parts of Cullingworth) isn't a consideration. However, we should look carefully at the extent to which we are lighting up isolated stretches of road throughout the night when only a very few cars and no pedestrians are making use of the lights. Rather than indulging in a typical piece of modern politics - a shouty press release designed to scare people rather than cast illumination on the issue - maybe we should be discussing how to reduce the waste (and it is a waste) of lighting up large parts of the country merely on the off-chance that somebody might pass by.

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Beaten up simply for being an old soldier. That is what we mean by extremism folks.

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Imagine the outcry, the calls for new laws and the accusations of hate crime that would accompany an attack by white skinheads on a Muslim man in religious dress returning home peacefully from the mosque. And I would be among the first to condemn such attacks, such hideous extremism damaging our society.

On Sunday evening, a former Royal Marine (and former Labour councillor as it happens) was walking through Bradford to get a taxi home after a drink with friends following Remembrance Sunday events. This man was set upon by three men simply because he was wearing the insignia of his military service and his medals. As I write he is still in hospital.

That same morning, another veteran was walking through a park in Keighley on his way to remember - he too was attacked simply because he was a veteran wearing his beret, his medals and a poppy.

We ask sometimes why we must work hard to discourage extremism. Those veterans and millions like them across the world put their lives on the line to defend us from such violent politics, from such hatred. Yet it is on our streets here in Bradford. So when I read this, I am saddened but less surprised at these attacks and the hatred they display:

A Bradford school is still not doing enough to protect its students from extremism, a new report has found.

Governors at Carlton Bolling College were sacked in July after an Ofsted report rated the school "inadequate".

Inspectors revisiting the school last month said it was "unacceptable" it had "not rectified the situation".

 The answer doesn't lie just in the schools but out in the community. The two attacks, it seems, were committed by teenagers - someone is putting the idea into the heads of these young men that it is OK to attack old men because they are veterans of our armed forces. That person needs to be found and stopped.

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Quote of the day: on race and crime

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Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention. Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for non-violent mistakes in their youth.

This is about the USA and comes from a superb article about the militarisation of the police. Don't think for a second this doesn't apply over here.

And the article? It's written by Rand Paul, a Republican Senator. Which rather kicks out at our stereotypes.

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The consequence of prohibition is always crime

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Bhutan banned tobacco. They're about to repeal that ban (h/t Chris Snowdon):

Now the country’s Upper House resolves that ban on import of tobacco must end. In a majority resolution on Monday (3 February 2014), the house said ban on import and sale of tobacco products must end to control the black market.

And as the proposer of the change has put it:

But for the most of us, if we consume tobacco, we will continue to be doing so illegally. That would make us criminals. And because the penalties have now been staggered, expect a bigger black market; expect many more criminals.

Prohibition always, without exception, leads to crime. And the more that people want the product, the more crime. As we move to an age of control that approaches prohibition - for drink, for tobacco and maybe for some food products - remember that the more you tax, the more you exclude people from the market, the more you create a criminal world as the only way for those people to get what they want.

And it's a nasty world filled with violence, with don't care. A world where giving kids booze and fags isn't frowned upon but is a business opportunity. A world where the criminal slowly shoves aside the legitimate and where the complicity of so many in crime breaks down the relationship with the law.

So all you health fascists, be careful what you wish for in your wet dreams of controlling other folks personal choices.

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A reminder of the effect of protectionism...

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Amidst all the nannying fussbucketry about sugar, I stumbled on a consequence of making the evil white stuff more expensive:

In the 1980s when the US price of sugar was pushed as much as four times higher than the world price there were many smuggling schemes if not actual sugar-runners. In our textbook, Modern Principles, Tyler and I discuss one scheme where Canadian entrepreneurs shipped super-sweet iced tea to the United States where the “tea” was then sifted and the sugar resold. 

Bans, tariffs, price-fixes - all the things so beloved by the fussbuckets - are just a recipe for cheats and criminals to thrive.

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In the 1980s when the US price of sugar was pushed as much as four times higher than the world price there were many smuggling schemes if not actual sugar-runners. In our textbook, Modern Principles, Tyler and I discuss one scheme where Canadian entrepreneurs shipped super-sweet iced tea to the United States where the “tea” was then sifted and the sugar resold. - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/01/is-the-sugar-quota-justified.html#sthash.FHa9wuS7.dpuf

In which I agree with George Monbiot

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I promise this won't become a common occurrence but George is absolutely right about the Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill:

The bill would permit injunctions against anyone of 10 or older who "has engaged or threatens to engage in conduct capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person". It would replace asbos with ipnas (injunctions to prevent nuisance and annoyance), which would not only forbid certain forms of behaviour, but also force the recipient to discharge positive obligations. In other words, they can impose a kind of community service order on people who have committed no crime, which could, the law proposes, remain in force for the rest of their lives.

I've written before about how the concept of "anti-social behaviour" makes criminals of people who have committed no crime:

I'm finding the term "anti-social behaviour" - or ASB - increasingly worrying. While the authorities deny that the purpose of the term (one of those mealy-mouthed, third way Blairite catch-all ideas) is to criminalise behaviour that is not actually criminal this is precisely what seems to happen.

This new Bill extends the arbitrary power of the police and councils to include "dispersal orders",  a "community trigger" essentially allowing people to gang up on a neighbour and get the police to support them, and the use of these new orders to speed up evictions. The result will be a further collection of bans, restrictions and controls all imposed to give the police powers to criminalise normal, peaceful behaviour such as you and I having a quiet drink and a chat sat on a wall in the park. The only criteria the authorities need is "nuisance or annoyance" - how subjective can that be?

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Bogus booze and fake fags...

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Prices soar thanks to the government's ravenous desire for our cash and the urging of the Church of Public Health to ban everything that gives pleasure (because pleasure is addictive). And the consequence is that the criminals arrive:

As shoppers prepare to stock up on alcohol to celebrate the festive season, Essex County Council's Trading Standards team is warning that bottles of counterfeit spirits, particularly vodkas are in circulation. 

This won't only be in Essex - across the UK enterprising criminals are gaming the gap between the cost of production (or the price of purchase overseas) and the tax-inflated prices in Britain's shops. And the bigger the gap, the bigger the margins for the criminal and the greater the temptation to break the law.

The consequence, of course, is that stuff like this happens:

The illicit substances were tested and it was found the vodka was in fact industrial alcohol and contained a chemical commonly used in bleach, as well as xylene and toluene – two compounds found in paint stripper and dangerous for human consumption.

You see the criminals don't care. They're not bothered if they poison you or make you blind. Nor are these entrepreneurs fussed at all about selling fags and booze to children. And as the nannying fussbucketry continues, as the duty on booze and fags rises, the problem will get worse. Just look at Ireland:

Customs officials have smashed a major smuggling gang and seized nine million cigarettes.

Four men were being quizzed over the massive seizure following the intelligence led operation involving officers from Revenue’s Customs Service, in conjunction with CAB and Gardai.

This bust has an estimated potential loss to revenue of €3.7 million and estimated street value of €4.3 million.

Of course some people continue to pretend that all this isn't a problem -  denying that approach a quarter of the tobacco consumed in ireland is smuggled (because the data comes from the tobacco companies).

It seems wrong that adherents to the Church of Public Health are happy to see people poisoned, blinded or killed and for criminals to make millions from smuggling and manufacturing fakes rather than admit their approach isn't working.

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More crime, more smokers, fewer jobs - hey let's do it! The story of plain packs for cigarettes.

I heard an interview on the radio about plain packs for cigarettes. The public health doctor being interviewed (I forget his name, they all blur into one hideous nannying blob in my mind) explained that it's a wonderful idea - lot's of words like'colours', 'cool', 'shiny' and 'children' were uttered capped off with the killer line, something like:

"...these are used to make people choose a particular brand."

That was it, a statement of advertising truth - it's about brand choice not product choice. And this is the basis for introducing plain packaging. There is absolutely no evidence at all that supports the idea that the shininess or otherwise of the packaging is the crucial factor in some thirteen-year-old's decision to try a fag. Indeed, if you think about this for a minute or two (especially if you were once that thirteen-year-old), you'll know it's nonsense. Of all the myriad reasons for someone starting to smoke, "it's in a gold pack" or "the pack is all pink and girly, I have to smoke" are such vanishingly small reasons as to be irrelevant.

But that doesn't stop them:

The policy – designed to make smoking less appealing to young people — appeared to have been put on hold four months ago. But Government sources indicated that ministers had decided to implement the scheme after an outcry from doctors and the Opposition.

I'm guessing that the last two words in that quote are the crucial ones - we're having a review because the government want to close off another line of criticism from Labour. This is despite what evidence we have showing what an utterly stupid and ineffective policy 'standardised packs' is:

...the accountancy firm KPMG released a report on 4 November, which highlighted how the Australian government has lost $1 billion Australian dollars in the 12 months ended in June, as a consequence of the vast jump in black market sales of cigarettes.

There was also a rise of 154 per cent in sales of manufactured counterfeit cigarettes and fake brands (known as ‘illicit whites’). One of these is called Manchester; it has a market share of 1.4 per cent, which is staggering considering they are illegal. In terms of total shipments, illicit sales of cigarettes have increased from 1.5 per cent to 13.3 per cent. And most significantly – cigarette consumption has not changed.

So there you go - these public health idiots and a ministerial class more bothered by headlines than whether a policy works propose an idea that will increase crime, cost jobs and, at best, have no effect at all on rates of smoking. It makes me want to scream - partly because these idiots still don't understand brand marketing (or even bother to ask people who do understand brand marketing what they think) but mostly because this is policy-making based on prejudice masquerading as science.

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It's Hallowe'en so we get some nonsense about rural crime from the Country Land & Business Association...

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We're always that October and November are peak months for burglary - lots of stuff about the clocks going back and the nights drawing in. However, this applies everywhere not just in that mystic place "the countryside" - however the Country Land & Business Association thinks otherwise:

Again sadly, rural areas present the greatest opportunity for thieves. Isolated houses and buildings, less lighting, fewer witnesses and the ease of being able to watch the owner’s movements all add up to a very attractive target for thieves. 

Except this simply isn't true. Rates of house burglary are much lower in rural areas compared to urban areas. To help understand this here are the country's top "burglary hotspots":

LS23, Bramley, Gamble Hill, Moorside, Rodley and Swinnow
BD12, Low Moor, Oakenshaw and Wyke in Bradford
N12, North Finchley
M30, Eccles
RM3, Harold Wood, Harold Hill, Noak Hill in Romford
SW12, Balham, Clapham South, Hyde Farm in London
LS18, Horsforth in Leeds
UB3, Hayes, Harlington in Middlesex
SE22, East Dulwich, Peckham Rye, Loughborough Junction, Herne Hill
LS28, Calverley, Farsley, Pudsey, Stanningley.

There you go - Inner London, Leeds and Bradford (and some place where they make pastry cakes with currants in). Not a rural place in sight.

In the Skipton & Ripon constituency (as rural as it gets really) there were 548 burglaries over the past year - that's 45.7 per month. In October and November last year there were 41 and 36 respectively - below the average.

By comparison in Leeds West (which contains the place on top of that burglary hotspot list) that average is 125.6 per month (1507 burglaries) nearly triple the rate in "the countryside". Again October and November at 104 and 109 respectively are below the average.

I also suspect that, if we were to exclude the two towns of Skipton and Ripon, the remaining countryside would have very little crime at all.

I've no problem with good advice about security - locking doors, putting tools away, marking property and so forth - but it simply isn't true that crime is going to rise "when the clocks go back" (it might but it might not) and it certainly isn't true that rural areas are targeted by thieves.

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