UK Dopers: Explain the point of an ASBO

In My Humble Opinion
21

Referance the lazy policing and law enforcment.

There has been a fair old bit in the broadcast media about how the public perception of crime does not match the reality.

The figures for crime as a total are alleged to have been falling for the last decade.

Ask almost any person in Britain about their experience of reporting a crime to the police, and it make you seriously doubt the reliability of the figures.

Report a crime, even a violent one, and it can take hours, days or in the case of one unfortunate ‘honour’ killing victim, they don’t even bother coming around when the victim reports that they feel fear for their personal safety.

The problem is that figures are gathered by those who have an interest in lying about them, seniour police chiefs and politicians - and yet opposition politicians make very little comment.

All I can say is that in the last 10 years, the number of prisoners has risen from around 50 thousand to around 80 thousand.

If it had not been for early release schemes such as tagging, or just plain old panic release to free up space for the most violent criminals, those numbers would be 10 to 15 thousand higher.

The rise in prison population is often blamed on the changes in jail sentencing policy ie longer prison terms and far more recalls to prison for those on early parole release.

The reality is that the 3 year reoffending rate for prisoners is at around 70%, but for those under 21 its actually worse, at over 80% - but this last number is also probably a lie because after 3 years, lots of those under 21’s don’t qualify for the under 21 reoffending figures, they have aged by 3 years.
I hate to think what the reoffending rates are for ex prisoners within 5 years of release, but they will certainly be significantly higher than the 3 year figures.

All this leads me to think that the government is siply lying to us, because the monitoring of offenders on early release tagging has already been shown to be rubbish.

We also know that the prison numbers are set to increase fromt eh current 80 thousand to at least 106 thousand and on possibly to 113 thousand in the next 8 years - these are the governments own figures.

I know there is a logical flaw in assuming rising prison numbers do not equate to rising crime, but when you analyse the crime figures, you notice that the crimes that are the most likley to be fully reported by the public and most likely to be correctly recorded - serious violent crime, are going up massively.

I cannot see how this can be so and yet the overall rise in crime is not reflected on the sum of all recorded crime - it really speaks to me of massive under reporting, the police by not recording it, or by the public who may well believe there is no point.

The ASBO is just a symptom of rubbish and lazy policing, instead of using the courts where injunctions should be applied, or instead of prosecution in the case of the person prohibited from possessing drug by and ASBO, it seems to speak volumes to me that the national crime figures are merely massaged to meet target and bear very little relation to reality.

22

I recently heard that just about all metals of commerce have been rising in price recently. The story mentioned that a number of rented beer kegs were not finding their way home, because the scrap value of the steel was more than the $50 deposit on the keg. So it wouldn’t surprise me that stealing lead could be worth the trouble.

23

I agree with every word of this.

The question we have to ask ourselves: Why is this happening?

24

I’m not quite sure I follow your post at all points, casdave, are you saying that you believe that the overall amount of crime has been falling for the last decade or not?

You know that most of these figures come from the British Crime Survey, which isn’t based on crimes recorded by the Police at all, but by asking people about the number and type of victimisations they’ve suffered over a year. From this page it can be seen quite clearly that we’ve gone from nearly 19 million offences per year to around 10.5 million in just over 10 years. When you compare that to the number of recorded offences it hasn’t changed much since the 5.5 million offences recorded in 1993, although given the change in reporting practices there are types of crime included now that weren’t included in the figures 10 years ago. My point is I don’t think it can really be denied that crime has fallen dramatically over the past decade. How you can get the public at large to believe that, I have no idea.

The reason the prison population has been ballooning is fairly straightforward - we’re sending more people to jail, and for longer. The past 10/15 years have seen a steady ratcheting up of sentencing with people receiving custodial sentences for offences that previously would not have carried them, and people receiving longer jail terms than they would have previously. This is tied in with the unshakeable belief that crime is rising, people demand that the government “do something” about crime, so they ramp up the ‘law and order’ rhetoric, and pressure is put on the judiciary to give more jail terms and longer sentences. Despite this, as you point out, the vast majority of prisoners re-offend within a couple of years of their release, and we’re paying around £36,000 a year per prisoner. We’d be better off giving criminals £30,000 for each year they’re sentenced and asking if they wouldn’t mind not committing any more crimes for all the good it does.

25

Weird. I knew copper had recently risen, but to think that it’s now worthwhile to crawl up on a roof and peel off the lead makes me wish I had invested in some commodities.

As for where the kids parents are, I suspect the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Dad is possibly proud of what a hell-raiser his kid has turned into. By god, that boy doesn’t take any shit from anyone! Or, his folks could just be glad the kid is not at home. I sure wouldn’t want him around!