(British news) Crime’s ugly rise

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From the Sunday Times at http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/article/0,,9003-2002005234,00.html (registration required)

SUNDAY JANUARY 06 2002

Leading article: Crime’s ugly rise

The government’s anti-crime strategy appears to be coming apart at the seams. Ministers deny it and claim that the figures for violent crime overall are falling. That was true when the last British Crime Survey was published a year ago, but London’s latest figures show a dramatic worsening. Victims aged under 16, who are not included in the national crime survey, have become a prime target for mobile phone snatchers. Anybody who resists, as a 19-year-old woman did in east London on New Year’s Day, may risk their lives in doing so. She was shot in the head and has still not been named because of fears for her safety. Official advice to mobile owners not to use their phones in public may be prudent, if depressing, but she was attacked at 5.30pm in a busy street. American research appears to show that resistance makes matters worse; in a study of 1m robberies in the United States, victims suffered more by resisting. People are faced with an awful dilemma: meekly hand over money and valuables or have a go and risk your life.

Last week’s rash of crimes showed that this violence is not confined to London and other big cities. Nor is the fear of violence limited to direct physical attack. The 86-year-old Somerset woman who suffered a fatal heart attack after her purse was snatched in broad daylight as she walked home with her shopping was a victim of violence, even if the law says otherwise. So, in a different way, was the Essex landowner who was arrested for trying to unplug a music system being used by 60 ravers in his barn. The police excuse was that he, not them, risked causing a public order disturbance. “It wasn’t so much a question of right and wrong,” said a spokesman. Why not? Because the unruly trespass laws do not apply to fewer than 100 invaders.

This is the topsy-turvy madness that prevents householders defending themselves from burglars in the middle of the night if they are considered to have used disproportionate force. The grieving family of Kevin Jackson, the Halifax man fatally stabbed in the head six times when he accosted car thieves outside his home, knows the real horror of disproportionate force. The killers showed him no mercy. Ordinary law-abiding citizens are entitled to feel there is something wrong with a criminal justice system that puts the victim at a disadvantage. The growing use of guns in violent crimes — especially drug-related ones — adds a new and alarming dimension to the problem. But knives and other weapons can be just as deadly. The restraints on the police to stop and search for fear of inciting racial unrest do nothing to reassure a frightened public, whether black or white. In fact, ethnic minorities suffer disproportionately from these crimes and would welcome a tougher police line.

Tony Blair came to power promising to attack crime and the causes of crime. But violent crime is rising sharply and the promise of more police officers by next year sounds similar to his other as yet unfulfilled pledges to improve public services. Police resources in London have undoubtedly been stretched by terrorist threats, especially since September 11. That does not explain the shocking total of 212,000 cases of violence and robbery in the capital in the first 11 months of last year.

The scale of the crisis is brought home by the comparison we report today with New York, where a policy of zero tolerance has sent crime rates plummeting. When people in London are six times more likely to be assaulted or robbed than people in New York, we need solutions fast. The new Home Office quango chief, paid £200,000 a year to spur police forces to greater efficiency, will be worth every penny if he produces results. Nothing will change dramatically, however, without a new approach by chief constables and senior officers. They have become more anxious to avoid criticism and to say the right things politically than to be dynamic leaders in the war against crime. Mr Blair appears to think that bigger budgets and new pay and conditions will work. Maybe. But he has had more than four years to turn things round and we are still waiting.