You don't see bobbies on the beat any more?

[Classsix T]

I fundamentally disagree with institutionalising hate crime as a distinct category of crime.

I don't, not for the committed crime at least. For the pure and simple reason that if the perpetrator of a crime committed specifically to target a race/religion/gender, music or fashion preference has felt the need to undertake such action is therefore a threat to the wider diversity of the societal soup this country has as a whole. Thus, pending psychological reviews they need sterner sentencing than that bloke who killed that other bloke because he did whatever to his car/wife/business. Do we give the latter leniency for "justifiable" crime?

 

On the face of it that may come across as a request for sterner sentencing equality, it isn't, murder is murder, but those that do it for no discern other than their own prejudices, they threaten us all, don't they?

 

C6T.

[Classsix T]

On reflection, bringing in "hate crime" was kinda inevitable. For too long an unplanned mugging/assault/GBH could be passed off as such. It's taken this long, since the murder of Stephen Lawrence, to recognise (or realise) that there's sometimes something more sinister at work and the law should reflect that.

 

Not a missive directed at Her Majesty’s Constabulary, perhaps the CPS or Law Lords.

 

C6T.

Edited May 14, 2018 by Classsix T

[jjb1970]

I don't, not for the committed crime at least. For the pure and simple reason that if the perpetrator of a crime committed specifically to target a race/religion/gender, music or fashion preference has felt the need to undertake such action is therefore a threat to the wider diversity of the societal soup this country has as a whole. Thus, pending psychological reviews they need sterner sentencing than that bloke who killed that other bloke because he did whatever to his car/wife/business. Do we give the latter leniency for "justifiable" crime?

 

On the face of it that may come across as a request for sterner sentencing equality, it isn't, murder is murder, but those that do it for no discern other than their own prejudices, they threaten us all, don't they?

 

C6T.

I think that can and should be addressed in sentencing guidelines where an assessment of the particular circumstances of a crime, the risk of recidivism etc can be made. Hate crimes indicate a hatred to others, but many crimes of violence falling outside of the definition of hate crime indicate hatred to others or are committed by persons who are clearly a risk to society. In the case of murder the crime is murder and when sentencing the judge should consider all circumstances of the crime when sentencing. This in some ways returns us to the same issue that bedevils the Police, judges now have sentencing guidelines as the government is seemingly unable to trust the judgement and sound sense of judges which is presumably why they were deemed fit to be judges in the first place, killing off the sort of professional judgement that was a valuable aid to effective functioning of the judicial system.

[Classsix T]

This is where the failure lies jjb. The plod pick up the perp and charge them. Evidence gathered is then passed to the CPS, who then do or don't...blah blah.

 

It's societal at heart. I dunno what the answer is, I'm an atheist preaching at the altar of Bill and Ted. No kids (deliberately) so much of my thought patterns these days Is stop the world, I wanna get off!

 

C6T.

Edited May 14, 2018 by Classsix T

[Mike Storey]

It would appear that there is a distinct sub section of British men who over imbibe, make a nuisance of themselves on public transportation or in foreign countries particularly when associated with sporting events.  It used to be widely known that British men could hold their beer, apparently not so nowadays.  No doubt a lot of excuses are laid to lack of education and social skills, low wages or no jobs.  In days gone by, the 'bobby on the beat' would have been a deterrent but sadly the police force these days is faced with everything from governmental restraints to those who feel the need to be soft on crime, except perhaps when it happens to them.

The US has its own problems, maybe not the same but as can be seen from many TV news broadcasts, the same kind of violence but with guns rather than knives which makes it all the more dangerous and disturbing.

 

Brian.

 

I get your point, but is the bobby on the beat such a deterrent? My formative years were spent growing up in North London, in the 1960's through to the mid 1970's. You still had bobbies on the beat, although Panda cars had started to reduce that. You still had gang fights, people being bottled in pubs and discos (there was a large permanent blood stain on the pavement outside the Tottenham Royal, which only ever seemed to get larger each week), drunks on tubes and buses, even worse football hooliganism, much low level anti-social behaviour on estates, a rash of shop-lifting, and I had a great wariness of travelling on buses or tubes late at night, and would certainly avoid dark streets and alleys in certain parts of town.

 

Although the actual data is highly unreliable, there is a consensus that violent (and all other) crime in the UK rose dramatically between the 1950's and 1960's, then kept rising until peaking in around 1995, when it started to drop continuously until the last few years, when it now appears to be rising again, but only to levels of the late 1970's (if the data is at all reliable). It is the perception that has changed, and we are all aware of being aware. But I don't see it so much as I used to, on my regular UK visits, but I hear about it from others much more.

 

Indeed, going back to the 2012 Olympics build up, we helped pay to flood Stratford and surroundings with bobbies on foot, for several years leading up to the Games. But I still did not feel particularly safe walking through the main (old) shopping centre even at lunch time, until perhaps the final year. In today's society where authority is not necessarily respected, there was only so much they could do.

 

England is one of the most observed countries in the world now, with CCTV almost everywhere in cities and most towns. Yet even that is no longer a deterrent, from latest data. It leaves me wondering what would be?

[Horsetan]

....In today's society where authority is not necessarily respected, there was only so much they could do.

 

England is one of the most observed countries in the world now, with CCTV almost everywhere in cities and most towns. Yet even that is no longer a deterrent, from latest data. It leaves me wondering what would be?

Chinese surveillance. The sort of thing they have in Xinjiang, where virtually nothing seems to move without the authorities knowing about it.

[Kickstart]

Apply LEAN principles and remove the "waste" in the system is the only suggestion I can think of. Treat it like a manufacturing plant.

 

I am not sure that is viable. There is both the short term catching the immediate problems, and the long term which has no immediate benefit and which is easily disregarded as waste.

 

Money can only be saved by shuffling budgets so much. Eg, I used to live in Winchester and at the time it had a reasonable size police station. Now closed and demolished, and I believe the nearest station is now Alton, ~half an hour away. How much time is wasted between the station and a city of 45k people?

 

O.K. - let the police absorb austerity in the same way other government organisations have had to.

I suspect they have. At the same time as some requirements have increased. Some of those requirements have justifiably increased as bureaucratic protections against some abuse of power from some former officers. Others are related to cost savings in other areas, or a need to cope with more complex protections of those who are perceived as vulnerable.

 

I think the idea is less that the beat bobby apprehends huge numbers of miscreants and more that they provide a human and approachable face to what is becoming easier to perceive as some remote, slightly sinister, almost paramilitary organisation. If the Police come to be seen as "The Enemy" rather than an ally of the public, or even irrelevant to a sufficiently large fraction of the population, Dog help civil society.

Which only works if they are reasonable. Otherwise they become seen as the enemy.

 

Katy

[Mallard60022]

Lets just face it. People demand a police presence at a time when they need it. However, many are not prepared to pay for that presence, then they are up in arms (sorry) when the Police do not appear. Yes I know Force budgets need careful and sensible management but I also know that much police time is now taken up in dealing with stuff that used to be dealt with by the Health Service, Prison Service, Councils and Border Control and far too many traffic problems because so many people using roads are generally not very law abiding/caring/considerate and the dedicated Traffic Divisons are few and far between.

P 

[jjb1970]

At the risk of sounding cynical (and as y'all know, I am not a cynical person) I have observed two general outcomes in government departments I've worked with when our government cuts spending:

 

-attempts to reduce spending end up increasing spending because of the (possibly wilfully) inept approach to fat trimming and economising

 

-if put under the cosh, rather than do a proper evaluation of what tasks need to be prioritised and what spending can be let go, they go straight to cutting something high profile which will cause a storm in order to send a message

 

I suspect the Police are not much different. Rather than really looking at why there is so much paper work, such a long administrative tail etc and re-focusing on actual Police work it is easier to not do stuff like that and blame budget cuts. Not helped by the rise of the career administrator. I have no issue with paying good managers well, and anybody who thinks large organisations don't need capable management is daft IMO so I have no time for the sort of argument that assumes that any spending on management in public services is waste. However I saw an awful lot of pretty mediocre no hopers in the civil service who lived by process and dreaming up procedures and who added nothing to anything that was of any use yet who seemed to be doing well enough out of it all. All of this is also found in the private sector of course to a degree, especially in big companies or those operating in heavily regulated (protected) segments (such as electricity transmission and distribution) but there is always that control measure that eventually when things get really stupid private companies end up bankrupt.

[Mike Storey]

Lets just face it. People demand a police presence at a time when they need it. However, many are not prepared to pay for that presence, then they are up in arms (sorry) when the Police do not appear. Yes I know Force budgets need careful and sensible management but I also know that much police time is now taken up in dealing with stuff that used to be dealt with by the Health Service, Prison Service, Councils and Border Control and far too many traffic problems because so many people using roads are generally not very law abiding/caring/considerate and the dedicated Traffic Divisons are few and far between.

P 

 

I get it, but your targets are not quite right. Police are no longer used in most court sessions or prisoner transfers. Police are no longer required to deal with parking problems and rarely deal with anything beyond speeding, accidents and so on - the key problem there is that specialist traffic cops are also being used for crim catching in their high speed cars - they are spread too thinly. The Border Agency has far more powers of entry, search and detention than the Police.

 

Thus there have been attempts to reduce the scope of professional Police, including additionally the civilianisation of many back office duties including emergency control centres and so on, but you are absolutely right about "care in the community" becoming more of a policing issue, due to both health and council service cuts. But as others have said, the increased procedural demands of any police officer now, once an arrest has been made, plus all the follow up work, and many other mandatory processes they must both be proficient in and carry out, would make Jack Regan turn in his grave. However, could society tolerate the way things were done in the days of the Sweeney (or Life on Mars for our younger viewers)?

 

I take the point from some others that many Chief Constables and their sidekicks, may have played chicken, but given the appointment of so many elected Commissioners and the vastly increased profile of oversight and massively increased collection of data, I suspect this accusation is now a little dated.

 

So my opinion, for what it is worth, is that cuts to Police numbers since 2010 (when they were the highest ever, since I don't know when), have a direct correlation to rising crime. That point has been firmly made, yet again, on today's news - vis the huge shortage of qualified detectives for one. It is the equivalent of the railways saying we have had no passenger fatalities for 15 years, so let's reduce the number of people keeping the railways safe. DOO aside (ahem) that has not exactly happened (cue....exit, fast).

Edited May 16, 2018 by Mike Storey

[brianusa]

One might wonder why a resident in the US would comment on this discussion.  Being the son of a policeman in Plymouth, I was able to get a second hand idea of what went on before I left in the early sixties when all was more or less the same as it had been for years before.  Certainly there were problems as anyone who knew Plymouth at that time will know.  Certain neighbourhoods were notorious and as the Royal Navy had a bigger presence then, certain areas of town were best avoided.  But the police were able to handle it all with perhaps a wave of their truncheon and a blow on their whistle.  Growing up then, we teens had a certain respect for the police whereas today a lot of times they are viewed as the enemy.  In this country, many times they are the enemy and running battles ensue with both sides armed to the teeth which leads to all sorts of rancor, especially if the fight is between an ethnic minority and the police officer.  A bobby on the beat would have a hard time trying to control the ensuing melee which leads to a massive police presence with all the negative publicity such as black lives matter and police brutality, etc.

 

Brian.

[rockershovel]

One thing I found instructive, travelling around the FSU from the early 2000s onwards, was the experience of cultures where the police, and the law, are of variable effect and command little respect, at times.