Chapter 80 Section 7 Reducing Crime

Recognizing the magnitude of the problem is a very important start when we turn to the second area of ​​crime.But it's almost as important to reject the hopeless argument that "nothing ever gets done".Since 1979, the means to fight crime has grown considerably, including 16,700 new police officers and 20 new prisons, but this has often allowed critics of the Conservative Party's criminal justice policy to advance their argument: since The number of police personnel and prisons has increased considerably, but crime continues to rise, so other, unspecified but more open-ended approaches should be tried.Unless these critics are seriously arguing (and almost none of them do) that increased police numbers and more prison facilities either don't work or lead to increased criminality, it's a naturally illogical corollary .It is more likely that crime would have increased even more without the addition of these means.

Both limited evidence and common sense suggest that the most adept criminal makes what he considers a reasonable calculation, weighing the likelihood of capture and the length and suffering of the sentence against the possible The magnitude of the envisaged benefits (material and moral). Conclusive proof that this was not the case had to be conclusively demonstrated before traditional penalties and corrections could be abandoned.In addition, Ernest van den Hage, an American criminologist, made the following persuasive and important statement: Whenever the risk of punishment falls, the crime rate rises. Since the 1960s, crime has increased because the risks taken by criminals have decreased and the net profits they can obtain have increased.Now, crime is costing even more people.Between 1962 and 1979, the likelihood of being arrested for a serious crime fell by nearly half.The likelihood of a conviction after an arrest drops even more.Overall, the likelihood of being imprisoned for serious crimes has decreased by 80%. . . . In 1960, 90 of every thousand serious offenders went to prison, but in 1990 only 30. "

As he concluded: "One might wonder why crime didn't rise more then." I'm not trying to say that more police, tougher sentences, and more prisons are the whole answer to rising crime.But certainly he said modest but real benefits could be achieved by more effective crime prevention measures and targeting, and more precise police action.But the fact remains that the most direct way to fight crime is to make life as difficult as possible for both those who would and those who do.This is not something that can be done cheaply.Increasing the number of patrol officers, providing state-of-the-art detective technology, and building and refurbishing prisons will certainly require continued spending on rule of law services.

The rule of law is a social service.The fear of crime and the threat of crime paralyzes entire communities, keeps lonely older people shutting themselves in their homes, scars young lives, and raises the price of rampant thugs , so that they can run rampant in the countryside.When today's political leaders want to divert vast amounts of money from social security benefits to the rule of law—so long as they live up to their rhetoric about punishing crime—I think they will get more support and less criticize.