A Confidential Crime Policy

Back in 2000 one of the Great Good and Extremely Well Fed was appointed as a "Blue Skies Advisor" to Tony Blair.

The individual was John Birt, previously Director General of the BBC and general stalwart of the New Labour establishment.

His mandate was to pursue "A New Vision for the criminal justice system"

To be fair to Dear John, he was enthusiastic in his task.

Some would say over-enthusiastic.Especially those who did not want the boat rocked, let alone capsized.

The confidential document he produced, or rather, some of the statistics he presented in it, caused a minor governmental earthquake.

The report was suppressed. Ministers were not available for comment. Whenever it or its contents were mentioned, the topic was quickly changed.

After being stonewalled by a red faced government, the press eventually gave up. The report was very quickly buried. Dear John was pensioned off to other things. Various news/media bodies were bought off/debts called in, to ensure the outline of the report only got a very brief public airing and was never mentioned again.

This was one of those gorgeously ugly moments we sometimes have in our land. Where the hidden forces of the state leap in on a damage limitation excercise.

Panic stricken they seek to suppress a document, or the reportage of a demonstration or some foreign debacle. All of which could have catastrophically embarrassing results if not killed off.

Incidentally, this report (funnily enough) is still quite hard to come by. So I've put a rather crap pdf copy of it Here.

The document is still stamped "Confidential - Policy". But have a read anyway.

You know you want to.

So what was so wildly dangerous about Dear Johns report? And why am I blogging about it now? Eleven years later.

The reason I am writing about it, is that unfortunately, I don't think much has changed.

The report also contained some shocking statistics. But not the normal run of the mill, manipulated and sanitised statistics boringly churned out each year, but the real ugly data.

These are statistics  that are normally airbrushed out so the public don't get alarmed at the incompetence of their government and legal system.

For example: (this relates to the late 1990's)

Per year there were 14 million serious offences.

Half of these 14 million offences were committed by a hard core of 100,000 serious persistent offenders.

Each of these hard core offenders was committing on average 90 serious offences per year.

At any one time 15000 of these offenders were in jail and the other 85000 are out on the streets, doing their "business".

82% of this group on release from jail were re-convicted.

The item that almost the whole of the establishment wanted to avoid was that this flew directly in the face of their idolised view of criminality as a sort of base band signal produced as a result of poverty and deprivation. To them it was nothing to do with evil or greed.

Today we have Clarke, Cameron, Clegg and Milliband vying for positive voter feedback on being "tough on crime" or "compassionate" or whatever.

But really they need to read John Birts report. It may out of date, but it is still highly relevant.

It showed that in the 1990's half of all serious crimes were one off's. I would suggest that these people need re-habilitation.

It also showed that the other half were committed by dedicated and perpetual criminals. Each of whom was responsible for 90 serious crimes per year.

To a mere pleb like myself this sounds very much like:

We should be compassionate to crimmo's who have only committed one crime. Give them a second chance. Lots of supervision, support and training.

This in turn makes some space in the prison for:

The bastards who perpetually wreck society and peoples lives. Lock them up and throw away the key.

Just on this reckoning, if we released (or let out early - with supervision) 15000 low rate/first time offenders (out of approximately 65000 low rate/first time offenders) and locked up another 15000 hardened crimmos - or significantly increased their sentences, then that would reduce crime by:

 90 x 15000 = 1.35 million serious offences per year

Or (in 1990's figures) it would reduce the serious crime rate by approximately 10%.

Thats with NO increase in the prison population.

Well, it is just an idea. It would entail a little more leniency for those who have taken a bad turn. It would also involve a lot less tea and sympathy for the hard core. Neither of which is regarded as a vote winning  idea by our Great and Good.

What are the real chances of any government doing anything soon about serious crime, compassion and real justice?

Uh, Don't hold your breath.

Parental Responsibility

Some people may find this extreme. But I make no apologies.

I've just been listening to the news. The primary story concerned two young boys in Northern England who tortured and abused two other boys of a similar age.

Disgusting and distressing stuff.

Further back in time I remember the murder of a toddler named Jamie Bulger in Liverpool by two other young boys. Both stories have similar themes of negligent and careless parenting that led the attackers onto such evil paths.

In both of these highly disturbing cases there has been the ritual hunt for “those responsible”. Those responsible, the inferred guilty parties, usually amount to the police, teachers, doctors and social workers. There may always be lessons to learn, and there may even be the occasional worker not fit for the job. But the truth is, the pilloried agencies are usually hang-tied and overwhelmed with “clients”. Most often they are doing the best they can.

Whenever you hear the phase “procedures not followed” or “inadequate procedures” it is usually code for a severe arse covering by those at a higher level. The poor bod on the front line ends up having to try and implement the resulting meaningless diktats with their massive amounts of associated form filling. All implemented mainly to protect the upper echelons of management and government from accepting any responsibility.

But I digress.

In my book, those bearing the heaviest responsibility in these awful cases are the parents of the delinquents.

Say you owned a dog that you mistreated and allowed to run wild. If that dog attacked someone, you, quite rightly, would be up in court.

People are more important than dogs.

If you drag up your children , let them smoke your cannabis and watch adult films, as these kids were, then you are responsible if they go wrong.

I believe that every time a child appears in court, their parents (plural, including absentees) should appear as well and should have to, at the very least, give an account of why they think they are not at least partly responsible for their child's problems.

In the cases I cited above I firmly believe that the parents of these feral children should go to prison. I appreciate there are times when some offspring just go wrong. But that is what we have courts for, to apportion blame where it is due.

Being a parent is a heavy responsibility that should not be taken on lightly, whimsically or (as I suspect in these cases) by accident. A parent is responsible for their children and their behaviour. Parents should be both be praised for their children's achievements and also held to account for their misdemeanour's.

There are difficult circumstances where, parents may not be available (or whatever). But simply finding excuses for not doing something because there are a few bases you cannot cover is not a recipe for either protecting our children or promoting justice.

We should not be continually looking for scape goats. The people responsible for these terrible crimes are the children AND their parents. Only when we address the whole of the problem will we ever reduce these types of crime.