They are based on the very real prospects of minor but none the less
Posted in General on 24. Jul, 2010
They are based on the very real prospects of minor but none the less nasty confrontations with drunken teenagers at bus stops or with aggressive beggars in shop doorways.Politicians, the two Americans wrote, had to intervene early to stop areas sliding and becoming the breeding grounds for more serious crime. There was a real risk in the United States of being a victim of violent crime, they said. But police, politicians and the media tended to “overlook or forget another source of fear – the fear of being bothered by disorderly people. Not violent people nor, necessarily, criminals, but disreputable or obstreperous or unpredictable people: panhandlers, drunks, addicts, rowdy teenagers, prostitutes, loiterers, the mentally disturbed.”When such people move in, the argument goes, ordinary citizens – particularly women and the elderly – stop using the streets and fear of crime grows. Whenever he is accused of populism or not-so-closet conservatism, their work can be thrown in his critics’ faces.James Q Wilson and George L Kelling wrote in the American journal Atlantic Monthly that the crimes that are barely crimes at all are the ones that have the most profound effects.
They have provided the intellectual support for his controversial plans to make it easier to prosecute noisy neighbours and to reclaim the streets. Its ability to produce solutions has progressed in inverse proportion to the number of academics hired to study the problems of law and order: more experts; fewer answers. One of the few pieces of work that has lasted is a superficially dry study entitled Broken Windows, written by two American social scientists in 1982.Mr Straw keeps a copy in his office and praises the authors. If Mr Straw is an opportunist who is stealing Mr Howard’s clothes he is an opportunist who can call up some heavyweight backing.Criminology, like economics, is a dismal and unsuccessful “science”. If Britain is to return to being a country where it is surprising rather than commonplace to see beggars in the street there will have to be an element of compulsion.More disturbing for Mr Straw’s critics is evidence which suggests that he may be right Small crimes matter, say many criminologists Petty disorder leads to serious disorder. He emphasises with conviction and in detail that he is passionately committed to a string of measures which will help the homeless, the drug addicts and the poor. He mocks with equal passion the “woolly-minded and Guardian leader-writers who send their children to private schools and drive past beggars in the street without ever thinking how they can do anything which will bring change”.But he adds that when all the hostels are in place, when the council house building programme is under way, he will quite happily stand up and as a Labour Home Secretary announce that people “should not give money to beggars” and should expect the police and local authorities to clean up their neighbourhoods Compassion can only go so far.
He’s dropped a clanger and he knows it.”Mr Straw, however, gives no sign of knowing it. Even the dead eyes of the Labour Party’s spin doctors showed a brief flicker of emotion. “You can’t just say you are tough on crime without talking about the causes of crime,” said one “The party won’t put up with it. Several long-standing members proclaimed Mr Straw had propelled them into tearing up their party cards.THE Independent and the Liberal Democrats accused Mr Straw of aping Michael Howard; the Guardian claimed he was giving up on the welfare state; Shelter was critical; Alcohol Concern, concerned. At the very moment when the honeymoon between Old Labour and New Labour is over and many members are wondering where on earth the revisionism is going to stop, he sounded as if he was pushing the party further to the right. He did not even blame the Tories for the state of the nation, as Labour has been doing for the past 16 years and can be confidently expected to continue doing well into the first term of the coming Labour government (and beyond).
He was tough on crime, as Tony Blair insists Labour must be, but he forgot about the causes of crime. But surely the power of a future Labour Home Secretary will not be so slight that the biggest threat he can contemplate fighting is the menace of the “squeegee merchants”?Mr Straw did not talk about tackling crime by tackling poverty or inequality. The global market, the decline of deference and the European Union may have weakened the ability of politicians to deal with the great issues. One is meant to talk these days of “substance abusers” or “people with an alcohol problem”, not winos Shocking, too, was the apparent triviality of his targets. And the ’squeegee merchants’ who wait at large road junctions to force on reticent motorists their windscreen cleaning services.”The language was shocking to many on the left.