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Crime and punishment
Oct. 18th, 2013 10:43 amIn case you didn't notice, Home Secretary Teresa May made a speech yesterday. If you didn't notice, don't worry; I daresay more than a few people in the same room as her didn't notice either so it's understandable if you missed it. However, it caught my eye because the gist of it was that crime has fallen since the current government was elected, and that proves their police reforms have worked and criminals are running scared of the tough new measures and that Labour are wrong, wrong, wrong, so ner.
Law and order is a big deal for political parties. The Conservatives have always been seen as the party of Law and Order and their polling tends to go up a bit in the wake of serious crimes, whilst other parties constantly try to steal those colours for themselves.You might remember that during the first Boris vs Ken London election ken went on about how you shouldn't dare vote for Boris because crime had fallen when he was in charge and you wouldn't want to spoil that trend would you, whilst in the second election Boris pointed out that, yes, crime had fallen more under his tenure and you really don't want to go back to the bad old days do you? At the Labour party conference, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper accused Teresa May of 'complacency' and said she wasn't giving police the resources to cope. The Lib Dems said that crime was "too high" and that they would put criminal justice on "an evidence-based footing"*. The Greens said, well, not a great deal, actually, and I've looked. As for UKIP, I think their suggestion is pretty much "more bobbies on the beat, a clip round the ear and a bop over the head with a truncheon for really serious baddies".
The problem with all of this rhetoric is that it misses something fairly fundamental, and it's this: per capita recorded crime is at its lowest point since records began, and unless you vote for the "Let's all go out and commit a crime" party, that's a trend which is going to continue no matter where you put your X.
The reason for this is the march of technology. I think it first struck me when I was watching Batman Begins and thinking with half a mind "They'd totally catch him." It's really difficult to commit a serious crime and not have some serious resources brought to bear against you; to avoid shedding DNA you need to be wearing a hazmat suit and even if you manage to find somewhere with no CCTV for your mugging, odds on someone will get a shot of you on their iPhone. We're all carrying CCTV now, and we're going to be recording more, not less, in the future. Eventually it will make government CCTV obsolete. If you commit a crime that people care about, like robbery or violence or killing someone, the chances that you'll be caught are pretty high; high enough that the risk/reward equation means that fewer people are doing it and the number is going to continue to decline. Of course you're always going to get people dumb or desperate enough to go for it, but the trend is relentless.
So there you have it. Voting for a political party because they'll be tough on crime is irrelevant because, frankly, it doesn't much matter if they are or not. Pretty much whoever gets elected will be able to proudly boast they've reduced crime. Therefore you should vote on other stuff and assume the fall in crime will take care of itself.
*You what?
Law and order is a big deal for political parties. The Conservatives have always been seen as the party of Law and Order and their polling tends to go up a bit in the wake of serious crimes, whilst other parties constantly try to steal those colours for themselves.You might remember that during the first Boris vs Ken London election ken went on about how you shouldn't dare vote for Boris because crime had fallen when he was in charge and you wouldn't want to spoil that trend would you, whilst in the second election Boris pointed out that, yes, crime had fallen more under his tenure and you really don't want to go back to the bad old days do you? At the Labour party conference, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper accused Teresa May of 'complacency' and said she wasn't giving police the resources to cope. The Lib Dems said that crime was "too high" and that they would put criminal justice on "an evidence-based footing"*. The Greens said, well, not a great deal, actually, and I've looked. As for UKIP, I think their suggestion is pretty much "more bobbies on the beat, a clip round the ear and a bop over the head with a truncheon for really serious baddies".
The problem with all of this rhetoric is that it misses something fairly fundamental, and it's this: per capita recorded crime is at its lowest point since records began, and unless you vote for the "Let's all go out and commit a crime" party, that's a trend which is going to continue no matter where you put your X.
The reason for this is the march of technology. I think it first struck me when I was watching Batman Begins and thinking with half a mind "They'd totally catch him." It's really difficult to commit a serious crime and not have some serious resources brought to bear against you; to avoid shedding DNA you need to be wearing a hazmat suit and even if you manage to find somewhere with no CCTV for your mugging, odds on someone will get a shot of you on their iPhone. We're all carrying CCTV now, and we're going to be recording more, not less, in the future. Eventually it will make government CCTV obsolete. If you commit a crime that people care about, like robbery or violence or killing someone, the chances that you'll be caught are pretty high; high enough that the risk/reward equation means that fewer people are doing it and the number is going to continue to decline. Of course you're always going to get people dumb or desperate enough to go for it, but the trend is relentless.
So there you have it. Voting for a political party because they'll be tough on crime is irrelevant because, frankly, it doesn't much matter if they are or not. Pretty much whoever gets elected will be able to proudly boast they've reduced crime. Therefore you should vote on other stuff and assume the fall in crime will take care of itself.
*You what?
