Crime and Punishment in England

Within world society, the criminal fraternity traditionally uses violence, often of the most extreme kind, to maintain order and to control members of their own and rival factions. In difficult times, when the military are involved in extended bouts of politically inspired warfare using extreme violence, individuals are periodically moved from the front line into what is euphemistically termed R&R (Rest and Recuperation), where the stresses experienced on the front line are massaged away. They are then returned, or rotated back into the war zone. It is a fact today that because of the over-the-top effect so-called civilised reform has had upon our prisons and policing systems, criminals look upon arrest and incarceration in the same light as the military view R&R. The reactive policing system employed today, linked to the home from home aspect of prison life, provide the criminal with the opportunity to recharge batteries away from the front line; that is, the afflicting upon an increasingly helpless public their pursuit of a living. A living that is paid for by that same public in supplying the wherewithal for that lifestyle outside of prison, and a comfortable security when relaxing in prison, free of the pressures a life of crime engenders. This is an unfair and reprehensible form of layered taxation, and the total cost of societys unwillingness to terminate such an unfair and debilitating system of reducing crime has never been thoroughly addressed. Certainly not in terms of the overall cost to the economy, for in order to do that, many apparently disparate aspects of this wellmeaning society require consideration: The true costs of re-active policing instead of previously employed pro-active beat policing; the costs experienced by the victims of crime in financial terms as well as stress. The unlisted cost of repairing the ravages of crime, as experienced by local authorities, private citizens, and increasing Insurance Company premiums. The National Health Service Budget, considered in terms of expenditure on repairing the results of inter-element violence and the treatment of depression - and post-traumatic stress - in the criminals innocent victims.

The foregoing costs to society, suppressed by the appropriate authorities when quantifying the effect of crime, are, in any case, difficult to quantify. Central Government are unable or unwilling to announce the true level of fraudulent use of the associated Benefits System, and the full impact of crime upon society in other ways, even if they know. These grey areas are also difficult to quantify. Nevertheless, they must be quantified and included. It is a fact that criminality is NOT caused solely by poverty, unemployment, or a combination of both. Government figures presented by myriad studies carried out on behalf of the Prison Service, the Police, and the Government between 1850 and the present day put that lie to rest. The greatest crime proliferation figures, collated during periods of high employment and affluence within the middle to lower classes of English Society, indicate a very different malaise.

Crime figures per capita of population have increased exponentially since the institution of three separate but intrinsically linked occurrences, even as the standard of living within the poorest communities moves, by an order of magnitude, away from the standards that applied before the introduction of the safety net we refer to as State Benefits and Welfare systems. The first event that has permitted the ascendency of the criminal in society occurred with the relaxation of prison conditions. Many practices within prisons in the last two centuries were barbaric in the extreme, and rightly discontinued. However, the removal of real discipline and any requirement for the criminal to make restitution for the gratuitous offences against society, turned prisons into protected and subsidised R&R centres in which drugs proliferate by common consent. Prisons today no longer hold any fear for the criminal, be he a first time or long-term offender. It is implicit in the sentencing rules produced by successive governments, themselves subject to minority pressure and enforced by a compliant judiciary, that no criminal will ever be required to meet the full cost of the offence for which the state seeks prosecution. For any readers holding to a different perspective, I refer them back to the first three paragraphs of this piece. As an aside, it is worthy of note that the early prison stubble haircut is now a fashion statement amongst those who place themselves on the fringes of society, as is the wearing of previously demeaning and dehumanising clothing in the form of numbered or otherwise identified designer but nevertheless uniform apparel. The second is the enlightened relaxation of the hold that religion exerts upon todays societies. There used to be an understanding that an omnipresent and omnipotent being watched our every move, and this did modify, to a limited degree admittedly, fringe criminal activity. This myth, thankfully, is recognised and understood to be fallacious, due, in the main, to prevailing common sense and advances in the understanding of the human condition. Unfortunately, its diminution has created a vacuum in the human psyche that remains unfilled. The third event was set in motion because of insufficient foresight and understanding on the part of those placed, without the requisite levels of knowledge, in charge of a Police Service that, at the time, was successfully containing crime within the limits allowed by increasingly tightening purse strings. The system in use at the time was a Pro-active one based upon beat policing linked to the knowledge such officers had of the people inhabiting their beat areas. They were, nominally, members of the public and perceived as such, engendering high levels of trust among law-abiding citizens. This was so, even though many of this countrys working class believed the police protected the upper classes. This Pro-active style of policing society disappeared, replaced by a Re-active style Para military concept at a cost that far exceeded the system it replaced, designed solely to augment the egos of Government ministers responsible for the financing of such a Service, and the men placed in charge of this costly and relatively ineffective monolith. Men extracted from universities were fast-tracked through the ranks of the Force without being given time to acquire the area knowledge that walking the beat used to provide in terms of identifying offenders and potential future offenders. To this backward step, they added the target of reducing major crime, overlooking the fact that the majority of crime is of a relatively minor kind of local event, but having the greatest effect on its victims, for it is personal. (It is a fact that the incarceration of the perpetrators of casual local crime that has brought about the overpopulation of prisons today).

The presence of a beat police officer inhibited this form of petty crime, but how can one determine the true value of prevention, other than retrospectively? This inability enabled governmental policy-makers to assume it of little value, and therefore irrelevant. No publicly reported retroactive costing is available for use as comparison. Excessive attention to the needs of criminals convicted and imprisoned at the expense of their victims, attention paid for by those same victims, is but one error. With this is coupled the removal of Pro-active policing in favour of Re-active policing - what one journalist calls Fire Brigade policing - in that it occurs after the fact. These are the three main reasons why crime is becoming an uncontainable problem in this country. There are of course other aspects that must be addressed together with these two, and relate to the manner in which the state has interfered in the lives of ordinary families by removing the right for discipline to be applied by the family without recourse to an authority which is itself incapable of maintaining any valuable level of deterrent. People claim, (those in a position to bring about change) that we cannot go back to what may have been seen to work in the past. This of course is nonsense. It only requires strength of character and determination, both of which are obviously lacking in the leadership of this country, the police, the judiciary, and so-called welfare departments. These are the departments (themselves riddled by incompetency and fraud), upon which the public (from whom the criminals select their victims) depend for protection. Those who complain about the level of care expended upon the criminal, in the full knowledge that the victims of criminal activity receive levels of care and consideration far less than that accorded to the perpetrators of crime, are penalised by authority and accused of demeaning the system. Peter Williams, 8th June 2008 1434 Words