"A refreshing addition to the world of think-tanks" Daily Telegraph, 18/10/2007

CRIME

Last updated: 26/03/2008

Being seen as “tough on crime” has become so de rigueur for the modern British politician that serious debate about tackling crime has often been displaced by machismo, meaningless sound-bites and a raft of initiatives which have frequently been useless, expensive, counter-productive or a mixture of all three.

 “Rebalancing” the system does not cut crime

 The government’s permanent rebalancing of the criminal justice system – with nearly 50 criminal justice bills passed since 1997 [3] has not only led to enormous upheaval and confusion – but misses the principal target when it comes to combating crime. Approximately 80% of crime goes unpunished in the United Kingdom, of the 20% that is detected over 90% results in some form of punishment – ranging from a caution to a life sentence. The ratio of acquittals to crimes is therefore tiny. No doubt some proportion of these acquittals is of guilty people. But to focus significant legislative and administrative effort on the tiny slice of people, which includes ALL of those people wrongly suspected or charged of an offence, is a recipe for sending a few more innocent people to prison – not for deterring, catching or punishing criminals. The gaping hole in our criminal justice system is not an inordinately liberal treatment of defendants in court, but the fact that four out of five crimes go undetected.

 The police are becoming bureaucrats not crime fighters

If detection is the principal problem – and if improved detection rates would not merely apprehend and punish more criminals but deter them from committing crimes in the first place – then the efficiency of British policing is paramount. But so keen has this government been to “prove” an increase in efficiency that they have swamped police officers in bureaucracy and red tape. This constitutes a sort of politicisation of the police force – not in the full blown sense of them being an enforcement agency of the Labour Party – but because vast amounts of police time is spent ticking boxes and filling in forms which have little purpose beyond providing the government with data (one hesitates to call it “information”) which has little or no value beyond its use in government press releases.

Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the chief inspector of the constabulary, has said there is “excessive bureaucracy” and that there is “a more risk-averse police service, which will at times over-record and under-deliver for fear of missing something or being vulnerable to criticism.” He laments the fact that professional police officers don’t – and aren’t encouraged to – exercise their own professional judgement and discretion.[4] If a police officer’s career advancement depends on them ticking boxes and completing forms, don’t be surprised when we end up with a police force of useless bureaucrats rather than effective crime-fighters. PC Stuart Davison – author of the best-selling “Wasting Police Time” – is one of many who have left the British police force for these reasons. He described incentives in his working life thus; “We get exactly the same points for cautioning a girl for pulling another girl's hair as we would for a domestic burglary. In terms of statistics they're exactly the same. The public think we solve burglaries, the public think we're actually on patrol accosting thieves and people who are up to no good. But what we actually do is attempt to meet Government statistics by solving trivial crime.” [5]

The surveillance/database state does not cut crime

But if the police have become ever more bureaucratised, this is as nothing compared to the scale of non-police state bureaucracy that the government stands ready to deploy in the fight against crime. There is, of course, a long and compelling list of civil liberties and privacy concerns over the growth of the DNA database, the impending National Identity Register and the explosion of CCTV [6]. But even if these were to be cast aside, there remain serious questions as to whether any of these mechanisms represent value for money in reducing crime – indeed, whether they are effective to any meaningful degree at all.

The government’s national identity register, and accompanying identity card scheme, will cost billions to create and maintain (the anticipated cost seems to rise with every new estimate) and is unlikely to exert any downward pressure on criminal activity. Virtually no crime goes undetected or unpunished for want of identifying the suspect. The problem is usually either an absence of compelling evidence against the suspect – or, more often, a failure to apprehend the suspect in the first place. Even in the area of benefit fraud, a crushing majority of fraudulent claims do not relate to an individual purporting to be someone else, but rather to them lying about their circumstances. Even if one were to make the heroically optimistic assumption that the NIR will be a government IT project that will actually function; even if one were to credit that it will not be riddled with errors and inaccuracies; even if one were to trust the authorities to only ever use such information in a benign and intelligent fashion; even then it’s hard to see how the fight against crime would be assisted by an ID scheme. The evidence from other European countries, where a plethora of different identity schemes are in operation, does not support the view that they are an effective tool against criminal activity.

Recent public debate about an extension of the DNA database [7] has understandably focused on possible civil liberty concerns, but Genewatch UK deserved much more attention for their research showing that less than 1 in 250 recorded crimes involved DNA detection - and that the doubling in size of the database in the last five years had not led to any increase in the number of detections or matches[8]. As with ID cards, even if all concerns with regard to liberty and privacy were dismissed, a universal DNA database would not be a cost effective way of tackling crime. In fact, it is already too unwieldy.

The explosion in the use of CCTV remains a peculiarly British phenomenon – whilst accounting for 1% of the world’s population, we house about 20% of the world’s CCTV cameras[9] - about one camera for every fourteen British citizens[10]. This awesome scale of surveillance has not transformed the UK into an island of peace and tranquillity in comparison to other Western countries who have not been so easily seduced by the impact of cameras. But none of this evidence has the deterred the Home Office from spending 78% of its crime prevention budget on CCTV cameras in the past decade[11]

Increased use and length of incarceration has limited impact

Prison obviously “works” on some basic level in reducing crime – whilst criminals are behind bars, they simply don’t have the opportunity to offend. This undoubtedly has measurable and substantial public benefit. Nevertheless, costs of imprisonment are astronomical – some estimates put the cost as high as £50,000 per prisoner per year [12]. On a crude, cost-benefit analysis, whilst one might conclude that keeping an armed robber locked up prevents about £1,000 worth of damage a week, it is difficult to believe this is true of the most minor offenders in prison.

Given that the crushing majority of prisoners will one day be released – including most murderers and paedophiles – the rehabilitative effect of prison needs to be factored in to its potential value to the taxpayer.  Little encouragement can be found here. Recidivism rates upon release are truly awful, perhaps around 75% for some categories of offender[13] – and it is worth noting that such statistics are based on repeat offenders actually being caught. Given the vast number of crimes that go undetected, it is worth factoring in the reality that some (perhaps many) prisoners will revert to a life of crime immediately upon release – but simply won’t be apprehended.

If you are admitted to hospital, you don’t measure the value of your treatment purely based on your time and experience in hospital. Once discharged, you trust – in most cases – that you’re able to avoid an immediate relapse. If the medical profession were producing relapse rates as enormous as the re-offending rates from Her Majesty’s Prisons, public confidence in surgeons, doctors and nurses would be shattered.[14]

Giving up your liberties does not guarantee you safety

The public debate – particularly around terrorist legislation – is often based around an acceptance that “liberty” and “security” are opposite ends of the seesaw. The government seems very concerned that this seesaw should be balanced – or, perhaps, rebalanced. They never explain exactly what or where this optimum balance is – merely that it needs to be “got right”. Within this hopelessly flawed paradigm, there appears to be no instance in recent years of any government minister suggesting any area whatsoever in which it would be appropriate for people to have a little bit more liberty and a little bit less security.

The government seems to feel obliged to bring new anti-terrorism laws before Parliament on a very regular basis without ever considering repeal of existing, ineffective laws. Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 is a classic case in point. This legislation allows police officers to stop and search citizens without any specific suspicion that the individual is about to engage in a criminal activity. These powers can only be used in specific designated areas and at specific designated times.

The sort of circumstance in which one might imagine such powers being applied would be that, say, MI6 receives high quality intelligence that a terrorist attack is anticipated in the vicinity of the Houses of Parliament at some point in the next week. A senior police officer – of at least the rank of commander – therefore applies to the Home Secretary to declare the square mile around Westminster as a designated zone for a maximum of 28 days. A heavy police presence deployed in the area uses their keen professional judgement to stop and search whomsoever they deem possible terrorists. The al-Qaeda operatives are rounded up, the crisis is averted and the Palace of Westminster is saved.

The practice, however, has been markedly different. In fact, the entirety of metropolitan London has been a designated area since February 19^th 2001 – with the Home Secretary renewing the authorisation every 28 days.[15]  Across Britain as a whole, a total of over 66,000 people were stopped and searched under s44 powers between 2001 and 2004[16]. These stop and searches led to a grand total of 57 arrests – a staggeringly low arrest rate of less than 0.1%. I’m unaware of any evidence to suggest that any of these 57 people were charged with or convicted of any terrorist offence. I suppose if you stop and search enough people under the Terrorism Act, then sooner or later you’re bound to stumble across some in possession of, say, illegal drugs. You may then wish to arrest and charge them for this offence. But cannabis and cocaine cannot really be classified as weapons of mass destruction and are not, to my knowledge, substances likely to be used by an al-Qaeda attack on the population of a major British city.

So, London been in an effective “state of emergency” for more than six years, has led to thousands of people being stopped and searched and no impact on stopping terrorism –it certainly did nothing to stop the 7/7 bombings. No doubt, a vast amount of paperwork has been filled in, countless hours of police time wasted and a string of nonsensical “targets” have been met. Needless to say, the government does not seem remotely inclined to even consider the repeal of s44.

The need for a different approach 

A progressive and effective approach to cutting crime would differ markedly from the government’s. Centralised targets and Whitehall-generated paperwork need to be radically scaled back, or abolished. The police need to be placed in a position where they can exercise their discretion and professional judgement rather than hone their abilities in form-filling and box-ticking. Grand hair-brained schemes such as identity cards or expanding the DNA database to include millions more innocent citizens should be abandoned forthwith – not just due to civil liberty concerns but also due to their monumental cost and ineffectiveness. Prison would continue to play a crucial role for dealing with serious criminals, but for some offences we should consider a radical upheaval in our culture of criminal compensation.

We should recognise that crimes are inflicted by individuals against other individuals and that “repaying one’s debt to society” is often a misnomer. It misidentifies the victim and doesn’t deliver appropriate compensation. If you throw a brick through my window or vandalise my car, I don’t want you to repay your debt to society – I want you to repay your debt to me. Society doesn’t own my window. I do. Society didn’t buy my car. I did. The debt that you owe is to me.

I suppose I may derive some modicum of satisfaction from knowing that you’re spending some time in prison (although at great expense to taxpayers like me) or that you’ve been ordered to spend 50 hours picking up litter in a public park (which I probably never visit). But essentially, I want my window replaced and my car repaired and to be properly compensated – by you – for the general inconvenience and distress you’ve caused me. Too often the demand that the “punishment should fit the crime” merely means that the public purse inflicts on the offender a fate approximately as bad as that suffered by the victim. But a new paradigm, whereby the criminal bears a direct responsibility for properly compensating the victim could bring enormous benefits – acting as a real deterrent, encouraging criminals to alter their behaviour and providing proper help to victims.

KEY POINTS 

• Endless “rebalancing” of the criminal justice system does not cut crime

• The police have become bureaucrats not crime-fighters

• Schemes that treat the entire population as possible suspects – ID cards or a universal DNA database – are not only a threat to civil liberties, but highly costly and ineffective

• Prison works, but is not a panacea. It is hugely expensive and recidivism rates are very high.

• Less liberty does not mean more security

• Criminals should bear more direct responsibility for compensating their victims

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