The winos and the squeegee merchants will then simply move on and become broken windows in another neighbourhood
Posted in General on 24. Jul, 2010
The “winos” and the “squeegee merchants” will then simply move on and become broken windows in another neighbourhood.By way of a warning to the Opposition, the professor quotes with approval from Raymond Chandler’s hero, Philip Marlowe (a private detective so tough he could get a place on the Labour front bench). But he warns that without radical social policies, the only option left to Labour is to get the police to sweep beggars from the streets. Magistrates responded by sending thousands more criminals to jail even though not one statute had been altered. The criminal justice system is not as independent from political pressure as judges like to believe It obeys orders.It all sounds firm but fair. But even some of Mr Straw’s supporters wonder if he can make an impact on crime and poverty on the streets when Labour has made the control of inflation, rather than full employment, its main priority.Prof Reiner likes Jack Straw and was one of the few left-leaning commentators who did not condemn him last week.
There was a striking example of this two years ago, when Michael Howard reversed government crime policy by proclaiming that “prison works”. He met the 13-year-old daughter of a friend who was getting ready go out for the evening. She was thinking about putting on a skirt, but then said: “I can’t. It’s dangerous to go out in a skirt.”And behind all the democratic socialist (or social democratic) proposals lies the hint of force. He is not proposing any new laws, but then he does not need to: if a Home Secretary says the streets should be cleaned up then the police will follow that lead.
“We must do something about young unemployed men,” he repeats.But he makes no apology for roughing up liberal sensibilities. “What some people on the left don’t realise is that crime hurts the poor the most. We cannot allow people to fall into a demi monde and then say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter’.”For Mr Straw, the need to combat disorder was summed up by a single, tiny incident. At times it seems as though he is talking to himself, banging into his own head by force of repetition what the priorities of the next Labour government should be.