I don’t think it’s fucked up, I think it’s sensible, depending on the crime. Otherwise you’re spending a shitload of money on police to prevent minor offenses that are easily prevented by taking some precautions.
Crime isn’t socially accepted in Britain. Why on Earth would you think that?
I don’t know where the obsession with British crime rates, outwith the UK, has come from. It’s not the first time the idea that Britain’s some sort of crime ridden nightmare has been discussed on these boards.
Crime isn’t accepted per se, but I would agree that you would be seen as foolish if you didn’t take any precautions whatsoever with your stuff and then complained when it got nicked. Lock your car when you go to pay for petrol, lock your doors at night and when you aren’t in etc etc
Generally it’s linked to some sort of pro-gun lobby. Maybe not in this case but on this board the majority of Brit crime threads have that at the heart of it IME.
As to locking stuff up. That’s just common sense. I’m 39 years old and lived in Dublin for almost all my life. It’s always been normal to lock your house, car, bike etc. I really don’t see the issue with it. Why make it easy for thieves? It’s not living in fear. It’s just a reality of life. People will steal things. Are there any major western cities were bikes and cars aren’t stolen or houses not burgled?
I am saying thats what it SOUNDS like. Fuck, I don’t know, I don’t live there. I dont live in other peoples minds either for that matter. Police blaming the victim as much as the criminal is certainly a step in that direction though IMO.
Here in the deep south USA I can certainly say most ire is still reserved for the criminals, regardless of precautions or lack of precautions by the victim.
You haven’t a flipping clue.
You’re so far off the mark that it’s practically impossible to argue with you. The good Cap’n’s analogy is apt here. If i declared that in the US everyone was afraid to go to school because they’d be shot by their black classmate who should have been toiling in the cotton fields, and in any case they learned everything at church as they thought science was nonsense… I mean seriously this is how wacked out you are.
Try getting the police in the United States to devote resources to recovering your stolen bicycle, or, hell, property stolen from your house during a burglary or your automobile. Odds are good you’re simply not going to see your property again.
Another point is that there are a LOT or rural dwellers in the States as the place is so big. In the UK that isn’t the case. Nigh on 60 million people live on the Island and that means that they are located closer or in urban areas where these types of crimes happen. I’m sure you can still find people in the arse end of nowhere that don’t lock their house as nobody is around.
Police are busy with other things and have budget and manpower concerns. They’re not going to waste time on minor things like bike crime.
It’s like a jungle sometimes; it makes me wonder how I keep from going under. Huh, uhuh, uh, uh, huh.
Looks like soneone has done a deal to help sell a book, the reality is that reported crime has been declining for the past few years.
I notice that only one author and one book is quoted, which might seem a fair thing to do given that this is a review of one book, except of course for one small detail.
This book and the review makes sweeping claims, and yet the figures quoted are absolutely miniscule in terms of total offending, to quote figures of a few thousand, across a scene of offending that is examined across nearly 40 years is laughable, talk about taking things out of context. Such far reaching and sweeping claims need to be evidenced, not one reputable quote here whatsoever, this is simply an opinion of a failed public service employee.
Sure a couple of thousand non-deported prisoners sound a lot, but this is across 7 years, and the fact that 5 had killed does not say anything whatosever about the prison terms they served, nor indeed does it actually say anything at all about the crimes of which they were convicted - some of which were driving related deaths (Which I will note is not mentioned here at all, but I happen to know that this is the case).
The fact the some prisoners abscond from the lowest security prisons - some of which don’t even have what you would call a fence at all - simply says that these were regarded as so compliant, and of such low threat to the public, that they could be placed there, and you will note that absconders, especially lifers will return to prison and will certainly add a minimum of 4 years, all for walking across an open field.
Please also note, the author of the reviewed book is a probation officer, he never ever actually goes into a prison, has no idea what goes in in there, so he cannot possibly speak with any authority on the subject.
There really are so many errors that it is egrarious, and these ones are just related in the time served in prison, the early release scheme, the formal warning system, tagging.
One part where he states that a prisoner cannot commit crime in prison, except against staff and other prisoners is so misinformed that it actually undermines the entire book, I have seen prisoners convicted of drug dealing in prison, or for mutiny, or for procuring illegal activities outside of prison, and for plenty of other things, even health and safety offences.
You will also note, the probation service has consistantly missed almost every target that has been set for it - for years and years, whilst the prison service has met or exceeded almost all theirs, this person is criticising the prison system from the context of an organisation that cannot manage itself, a system of which he is a part and, presumably, he is incapable of doing the work that the government sets out for him.
Dave, you gonna give up your natural anti-Tory nature for the (presumed) bunch of extra work you’re gonna get? 
Just a small point, but back in the 1990s, when I worked in local government and the probation service was still part of local government, they definitely went to the prison.
That the prison was within walking distance (just) may have been a factor. 
Maybe, but if you left your car unlocked just before it was stolen I’m pretty sure a sample of Southerners would still say it was a pretty stupid move.
Where did you even get that from? Once more, for emphasis: British Police do not blame the victims of crime, nor is it in anyway socially acceptable in the UK to steal, rob or burgle.
Yes, exactly the same as it is in the UK.
I wish crime would stop, I am just the right age to be paid off!
I am neither Labour nor Tory on this review, because it is so ill-informed.
Both Labour and Conservative have had a dismal, unimaginitative set of policies over the last couple of decades on crime, I do not expect it to improve,just because of the change of government, and I seriously do not think that things would have improved had Labour won.
Labour has removed quite a number of controls that were available to prison staff, but prisons survived the experience.
Labours idea of lifting children out of poverty sounds a laudable idea, but doing this by giving away money in the form of numerous benefits is not the way to do it, I expect the Conservatives will take us from that extreme to another.
Will this increase crime? possibly, and possibly not, we will just have to wait. I think we shoud try rehabilitation, through proper education and training, with unlimited prison terms for those who choose otherwise. Let prisoners decide just how much jail they want to do by letting them earn their time to release, let them stay there until they decide.
Wait, what? Are you suggesting that non-capitalist, non-consumerists societies do not have crime?
Bloody police are always investigating crimes. On no less than two occasions have I been inconvenienced by their cordoning off my house to investigate minor crimes, not to mention the time they smashed in my neighbour’s door and the time I was stopped and searched for incinerating a public litter bin. It’s not until you’ve come out of your front door to find a policeman hysterically screeching for you to stay where you are that you realise the police are coiled panthers, ever vigilant and ready to pounce on any crime they hear about, in this case one that hadn’t actually happened.
My four experiences under the implacable jackboot of the Nottinghamshire County Constabulary:
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As a youth, innocent to the paranoid mindset of those who habitually deal with criminals I was walking along the street in the dawn light and my slippers when I came upon a public receptacle of waste which was merrily ablaze with fireworks. As it was on a corner I didn’t see the approaching hordes until I was walking away from it and was stopped and searched just for being in the area. Even the pockets of my trousers were violated by their digital manipulations of searching. And I was an innocent man.
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Their smashing of my neighbour’s door happened when I wasn’t here, but it left the door opposite mine visibly slightly damaged, all because he was supposedly dealing drugs. Landlord wasn’t too happy. However the very pretty WPCs they sent around lightened my antagonism. The neighbour had already moved out, so I don’t suppose he minded either.
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I emerged into the alley which affords the only egress from my building and was immediately assaulted in a verbal fashion by a policeman shouting at me to stop immediately where I was. I then noticed that both ends of the alley were cordoned off by police personages and the blue and white tape they use. No-one had bothered to check if there were residences in the cordoned off area. They then insisted on taking my details, even thwarting my natural instinct to provide fraudulent details by requiring photo ID, I having apparently “wandered into an active crime area”. Although no-one bothered to tell us when the cordon was lifted I took the opportunity to overhear the conversations of the investigating suits and derived from this that the complaint being investigated was blatantly false and they didn’t believe a word of it. Which didn’t stop them buggering about myself and other users of a busy thoroughfare, along with access to a block of flats, a bung-'er-low and a hypnotherapist.
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A similar event but with my arrival on the scene from the street rather than the side of my building. Left me right past that time, with the admonition not to step in the blood
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I also once required the certifying of a photocopy of an official document, in line with the recommendations of the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform or some similar group of bastards. The police refused to do, despite being on the Berr’s list, because they “didn’t want to”.
So let it not be said that they are indolent, slovenly and totally disinterested in the investigation of crimes. And, in the Crowning Act of Policing, the local paper recently reported the seizure of several hundred stolen bicycles, most of which were to be sent to Africa on the grounds that people careless enough to have their bikes stolen and too lazy to traipse out to a farm in the middle of nowhere to check if theirs is amongst the haul don’t deserve to receive their property back.
Your sports fans are servile and cowardly.
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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.
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Most big football matches have no problems with a minimal police presence, although known trouble makers are banned from attending.
Chavs aren’t gangsters, they are the surly underclass youth and are generally more sinned against than sinning. Definitely not a “gang” problem in the American sense of crack whore, Uzis and bitch slapping.
Oh come on
That sounds like more of a pimp problem.
That’s right. The less stuff there is available, the less crimes of greed there are. It’s such an obvious concept, sometimes it is a little easy to miss.