Something has stuck in my mind for nearly 20 years now, from when I was researching Britain in 1940 for my book, Don’t Panic. In a book about the Cambridgeshire Home Guard, was the story of the first issuing of clothing for what were then called the Local Defence Volunteers. Only denim overalls and ‘field service caps’, but any uniform mattered because the Nazis if they invaded might shoot prisoners otherwise, and without uniform the volunteers might shoot each other by mistake. A platoon commander wrote to complain that the caps were too small for his men. “Getting no reply and fearing that he had given offence he cancelled the letter and wired that his men were too big for the caps.”
How you frame something can make all the difference – what responsibility you have for something. As for crime and criminal justice, according to an annual survey by the Victims’ Commissioner, most victims of crime are not confident whether reporting a crime would lead to justice. Prisons are over-crowded, and violent (partly owing to the illicit drugs inside). Police forces cannot balance the books. To single out one, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the chief constable speaks of ‘significant under resourcing’. Name a type of crime – fraud, stalking, the drugs trade and rehabilitation of offenders and addicts, VAWG (violence against women and girls) – and the authorities are, and may even admit, that they are overwhelmed; hence the poor service to victims.
Does Britain have a problem of too many criminals doing too many crimes – scams, theft from shops, theft of cars, people saying hateful things on social media? Or, is the problem that not enough resources – whether security officers patrolling shopping centres and even high streets, response cops, probation officers, prisons – are there to handle the criminals?
The answers to the two questions can be quite different. Crime reduction can be cosmetic, even disrespectful to the public – if it takes longer to get through on the phone to report a crime on the non-emergency number 101 and people give up, problem solved! The crime isn’t officially existing. Or, informing the public to be more aware of scams for example, through the Stop? Think Fraud advertising campaign, can mean fewer people are tricked. As for resources, as with schools, and hospitals, you could spend twice as much and still not necessarily give a good service; the money has to be applied sensibly. Savvy leaders, for example in the police, try to answer both questions – they want all the budget they can get, and can try to reduce what they have to do – including by palming off work on others, such as healthcare (made national policy by police, under ‘right person, right care’). Except that the anti-social or zonked out loiterers outside bus and railway stations are still there, whether moved off premises by private security or treated by paramedics. Violence reduction units as set up in many urban places in recent years have grasped that their work is not only or even mainly about handcuffing and jailing people, but about working with social services, and other agencies, to solve problems – joblessness, insecurity in the home – that are at the root of offending.
It used to be called joined-up government. Consider the harm done by prisons at capacity. One of the first acts of the Labour Government in July was to pronounce a mess left them by the Tories, and announce more ‘early release’ of (some) prisoners. To assess prisoners in terms of risk takes work by somebody (at a cost; prison inspectors report some jails are chronically short-staffed). Even without early release, some prisoners leave prison only to become homeless; perhaps they are the ones stealing from shops, and loitering around bus stations, repeating the behaviour that got them a prison term?
The conversation, then, should be around how large a state we want to pay for; how much we want the state to intervene in the lives of how many people who, for whatever reason (without being judgemental) are doing harm to others (and perhaps themselves). The Labour Government has talked of ‘change’ and difficulties, yet given no sign that it wants to have such a conversation with voters. Broaching such a conversation would be controversial; it would invite rebuttal from those who believe in a small-state, a low-tax Britain. Their point of view is valid. But if those who want better-funded criminal justice (and schools and hospitals) don’t take the view on; all the reports, and prison inspections, suggest that the small-state view is winning by default.
