In lawless Britain only the innocent are punished
If you’ve never caught a burglar, you’re missing out.
The satisfaction of locking one up is hard to beat. Whether they broke in with force, or slipped in by fraud, the impact of their crimes is typically the same: victims having their precious property stolen and, worse still, no longer feeling safe in their own home.
Yet new data suggests police have failed to solve a single burglary in nearly half of all neighbourhoods in England and Wales in the past three years. And, of course, the satisfaction can rapidly drain away when the court hands out a less than serious sentence – often measured in weeks or months behind bars, rather than years.
The problem policing faces isn’t helped by a political and policymaking class that have generally proven themselves as allergic to getting serious about crime as many of the senior police officers who seem to think crime is like the weather: impervious to action.
It’s little surprise then that the law-abiding in modern Britain feel like they aren’t just paying the heaviest tax burden, but also paying the heaviest price for the lawlessness they see, hear and experience. From concerns over increases in prices of goods on shelves because of a shop theft pandemic, to the delays getting about our cities because of disruptive protestors, through to the litany of text and email codes we must now contend with in order to ensure we, rather than fraudsters, can spend what little of our own money the Government deigns to let us keep each month, there’s a strong sense no one is on their side.
There is a dispiriting apathy afflicting our major political parties and the leadership of our public and private institutions. They are quick to fly flags, don rainbows, and talk about unity and cohesion, while failing to name (never mind confront) elephants in the room or get busy with the serious stuff that really matters.
I have little time for this on crime and public safety because I’ve seen, heard and felt the impact of crime in some of our most crime-ridden neighbourhoods. I’ve seen the young man stabbed and bleeding on the dimly lit pavement, the young girl who has nightmares after finding a burglar in her family’s kitchen, the women living in fear of drug addicts in their tower block.
The common denominator is that the criminals behind all of these crimes – and many more – are prolific. They commit huge volumes of crime, creating dozens and dozens of victims, and yet it is as though our entire policymaking and political apparatus is unable to grasp this simple truth.
When brought before our courts, we see, through the sentences handed down, far more consideration given to them and their rights than is often afforded to their past, present, or future victims.
Given the unsatisfactory performance of most police forces in catching crooks, as evidenced by their own figures, it is all the more important that we have a criminal justice system resourced and determined to use sentencing to punish, deter and incapacitate.
Alas, despite more than a decade of supposedly Conservative rule, we have a criminal justice system in an even worse state than policing – and just as vulnerable to even more of the radical leftist thinking that sees the criminal as the true victim, and society, but especially the average law-abiding citizen, as the oppressor.
The latest consequence of the state’s failure to ensure sufficient prison capacity is that the Government has a Sentencing Bill that proposes a new duty on judges to not imprison some criminals. The result will see more criminals deserving of a prison sentence avoid jail time.
Hooray for dangerous drivers, sexual predators, thieves, fraudsters, and violent knife-carrying thugs – but woe betide the rest of us, including their future victims.
Contrast this with the approach of Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, who has shown what can be achieved when politicians get serious about crime – and aren’t afraid of being labelled “populist”.
In less than two years, he more than doubled the prison population, with spectacular results: slashing homicide rates in one of the world’s most dangerous countries. Prison works.
The former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, is doing commendable work to fix the Sentencing Bill with vital amendments, but the reality is that we need no less of a radical crime-fighting package than that announced by Bukele.
Such an offering seems unlikely to originate from either Keir Starmer or Rishi Sunak, lacking, as they both are, the courage to wear the “populist” label that will be applied to anyone who dares to do what is necessary to make us substantially safer.
Rory Geoghegan is founder of the Public Safety Foundation and a former police constable
