For the last 40 years, government policy in Britain, de facto if not always de jure, has been to render the British population virtually defenseless against criminals and criminality. Almost alone of British government policies, this one has been supremely effective: no Briton nowadays goes many hours without wondering how to avoid being victimized by a criminal intent on theft, burglary, or violence.*
At first I believed this; but thinking again, I thought I would subject this claim to the greater skepticism of the genius hive that is this forum of geniuses. Is it really that bad? Another one of his articles says that if you leave a bicycle or other property outside, and it is stolen, the police will barely bother to investigate and have an attitude like it’s your fault.
Is it really Golgotha on the Thames, or exaggeration?
Well, according to Nationmaster, the US substantially leads the UK when it comes to murders (4.3 per 100,000 of the population, as opposed to 1.4 per 100,000) and rapes (3 per 1,000 versus 1.4 per 1,000), leads it modestly when it comes to assaults (7.6 per 1,000 as opposed to 7.5 per 1,000) and trails it modestly when it comes to robberies (1.6 per 1,000 versus 1.4 per 1,000). Looking at other categories of crime on Nationmaster, the general picture is that residents of the US are at greater risk of suffering crimes of violence than residents of the UK, but vice versa when it comes to crimes against property.
So, is it true that “no Briton nowadays goes many hours without wondering how to avoid being victimized by a criminal intent on theft, burglary, or violence”? Well, if it is true, on the whole there doesn’t seem to be all that must justification for their worrying more than their transatlantic cousins.
But, of course, as we all know the extent to which people worry about a particular risk is only tangentially related to the magnitude of the risk. If it is true that Britons are in a constant panic about crime, this tells us not so much about the incidence of crime as about the treatment of crime in the media and the attitude to crime in popular culture. If people worry, then, it is – ironically – more likely to be because of the activities of people like Mr Dalrymple than because of the crime rate.
I don’t know about England, haven’t been there for over a decade. But according to the UN victims of crime survey Australia has the developed world’s highest crime rates for pretty much everything, followed closely by England, and that is pretty much true for Australia, for a given value of true.
Certainly in Australia if you leave a bicycle or other property outside, and it is stolen, the police will literally not bother to investigate unless you demand it and everybody has an attitude like it’s your fault. It always amazes me watching shows like cops that US police even bother to investigate these crimes. In Australia, and I assume England, such a crime will be reported over the phone, you will be given a case number for insurance purposes and then asked what you want the police to do. If you say you don’t want anything else it won’t get officially investigated. If you want an investigation the police will turn up when they can, which most days will be at least 4 hours later and often several days. They will look at the area where it was taken and then recommend some security advice like getting deadlocks. The implication that it’s your fault is certainly very string, and in fact taken for granted, The idea that you can leave a bicycle or lawnmower outside over night without a strong risk of it being stolen is imply taken for granted by everyone,police or otherwise. If someone told you of such an event you would think they were unfortunate but ultimately a fool. Everything is locked up all the time. If it’s not it goes missing.
Similarly, everybody gives thought to crime constantly, but it’s probably not as bad as it seems. Like I said, you make sure that you lock up everything valuable constantly. There are large numbers of bars and even central city areas areas that you just don’t go because of the high violent crime rates. Businesses, schools etc. are floodlit all night to minimise loses. All those sorts of things are a normal background static of paranoia. It’s not like people live in constant fear of being randomly mugged or something, but there is certainly a recognition that crime is *probable *rather than possible even when going about your lawful business. As i said, if I left my bike in my front yard overnight I would be surprised if it was there in the morning, rather than surprised that it was stolen, similarly if you leave your car windows open in an area without heavy traffic you will be more surprised is someone hadn’t rifled through the glove compartment than if they haven’t. In the latter case the law is quite explicit that you committed the crime by not securing the vehicle.
The city I’m currently in has an on going problem of muggings. The same dozen or so people are responsible, committing on average 2 muggings a day. They have never been and will likely never be incarcerated. The local paper even published the names and rap sheets of the offenders, so it’s not like this is speculation. the police comment in that story is that people knew where the mugging were occurring and should avoid those areas, and that since the offenders are Aboriginal they were attempting community intervention to solve the problem.
Now how bad you feel this is probably depend son your likelihood of being victimised. But certainly within certain values of true what is said in the article pertaining to Britain is true of Australia. It’s not pleasant, and it is causing increasing public resentment, but it’s not necessarily as bad as the story makes out.
You have to be very wary of using those stats because they are compiled from law enforcement records. That presents two problems. The first is what crime meets the definition, the second, and more problematic one that every expert acknowledges, is that in jurisdictions where nothing is done about crime it simply doesn’t get reported. It’s know that reporting of common assault has decreased in Britain for example despite an increase in hospital admissions, and that is usually attributable to the fact that a report just results in sitting in a police waiting room for 2 hours and nothing at else. So in at least some cases a decrease in crime statistics is actually attributable to an increase in crime. That was the whole point of the Victims of Crime Survey (I note it has changed its name).
For example, according to that the US assault stat is 4.3, but England is 5.8, even higher if we add in Northern Ireland’s 6.8. Robbery sees England at 1.4 and the US not even making it into the top 15. For London vs NY the figures are 2.6 and 2.3 respectively. So when we compare victimisation vs reporting England sees many more of these crimes than the US.
The stats are one of the problems when discussing these subjects. Governments have a vested interest in reducing the crime statistics, and they can do so in all sorts of ways. The correlation between incidence of crime and stats produced from reporting are at best week and often non-existent. It’s generally accepted that victim surveys provide the most reliable data on the atcual crime rates, but they are damn hard to come by.
One thing I did find interesting. Looking at the latest report Australia has dropped from worst in the developed world, slightly ahead of England, to middle of the range between the 1999 and 2004 reports. I wonder why?
Absolute rubbish. I haven’t given crime a thought for god knows how long.
Is it correct that it’s very hard to get a gun (legally) other than a shotgun (which is very easy) and that the police waste a lot of time on stupid PC exercises? Yes. But that doesn’t make the UK a scary place to live.
Do you lock your doors at night? Make it a point to take your bike indoors or lock it up? Make sure your car is locked? Then by the standards of the article you do indeed think about crime all the time.
Like I said, true, for a certain value of true, but nowhere near as bad as it seems.
As a Briton who typically goes months without wondering about any of that, at even the most casual level, I’d say that the above statement is a gross exaggeration, amounting to a distortion of the truth. Actually, I wouldn’t – I’d say it was bollocks.
Look at the 1999 figures, which was the last lot that I looked at. Australia tops most crimes. It’s surprising that it has “fallen” so far in the last 5 years.
That’s coz nobody in Scotland has anyhting worth stealing. Who wants to steal haggis?
Hang on, Scots are stingy, and therefore rich, right? Damn it’s hard keeping my racist stereotypes straight.
Well I think his point was that you are afraid that you might be a victim of crime, rather than afraid for life and limb. And if you’re locking things away then you are indeed afraid of crime.
Anybody who is sensible takes precautions - locking the house and car, locking the bike or bringing it inside, securing ones purse/wallet and not flashing money around.
Crime happens everywhere - US or Britain. For someone like me who lives in the ass end of nowhere in Connecticut, I am far less likely to suffer some sort of crime than someone living in Boston or New York. The stats are somewhat absurd given how much greater the landmass of the US is. I would say that any random person in Britain is more likely to suffer a crime than someone in some random noncity area of the US. We simply do not have the population density nor the apparent violent brawl culture in the US.
When was the last time you saw 2 sets of sports fans in the US fight it out in the parking lots and bars? Random wiki-ing, 23 sports riots:
* 1971 South Africa rugby union tour of Australia
* 1981 South Africa rugby union tour of New Zealand
* 1985 Kenilworth Road riot
* 1993 Stanley Cup Riot - Canada
* 1994 Stanley Cup riot - Canada
* 2006 Basel Hooligan Incident
* 2007 Catania football violence
* 2008 Congo football riots
* 2008 UEFA Cup Final riots
* Aggieville Riots
* 2007 A.S. Roma–Manchester United F.C. conflict
* Czechoslovak Hockey Riots
* Dinamo Zagreb–Red Star Belgrade riot
* El Cajon Boulevard Riot
* Mihalis Filopoulos
* Football riots Široki Brijeg-Sarajevo
* Heysel Stadium Disaster
* 1967 Kayseri Atatürk Stadium disaster
* Michigan State University student riot
* Nika riots
* Richard Riot
* Rowbottom (riot)
* Sydney Riot of 1879
* 2009 Upton Park riots
I think we can dispense with the Nika riots, that was about 1600 years ago and the Sydney Riot of 1879 … BUT
the red ones are american, the rest are nonamerican events. Your sports fans are freaking out of control. I swear any time there is a big soccer/footie game anywhere hooligans stomp people into the dust unless the hosting city takes riot precautions. Almost all american sports events go off without riot police on site.
You have serious issues with binge drinking and associated violence that got the government involved. You have chavs everywhere, we only have gang issues in reasonably sized communities. My friend Tim lives in a small village in the midlands, about 2000 people, same size as mine. He reports binge drinking brawls and chavs in the pub he works in. My town has a similar bar/pizza place/hangout and we have not had any D&D [drunk and disorderly] incidents there in about 4 years. The closest we have to a chav population are about 5 emo goth kids. They lurk about listening to music and are about as menacing as a care bear.
Yes, we have crime. Why wouldn’t we have; it’s a byproduct of capitalism and consumerism. It’s no surprise that those more timid souls among us are living in fear of being a victim, when the effects of crime are splattered liberally throughout all forms of the information they receive from supposedly reputable sources.
Last year I went to China and left my garage unlocked for seven weeks. I regularly sleep with my windows wide open, and have more than once left my keys in the lock on the outside of the door all night long. I’ll probably pay with my life someday, but in the meantime I’m still waiting for somebody to steal the gardening tools I keep leaving on the front lawn of my city-centre house.
So no, I’m not exactly paralyzed with fear. Yer man’s a numpty.
Have you read the article? Because that’s not what he’s saying at all. He - or rather the book he’s read - is saying that the criminal justice service - courts, police, probation service etc - comprehensively fail the law-abiding citizen. Crimes are not investigated. Too many criminals are let off with cautions. Sentences not decently served. And so on.
Well, if it’s like that, it’s only because the authorities have let it get that way. It’s not as if the criminals have become unionised and have top rate representation at their command.
