For anyone who hasn't been to New York in a long time, a visit to the city can be quite a surprise. None of the old vibrancy of the place has gone, but the accompanying rudeness, hostility and sense of fear that used to stalk any trip out of doors has vanished. New York has changed, almost entirely for the good.

 

The cities of Britain have changed, too, but not for the good. Once bywords for their law-abiding nature and the calm, consensual policing of safe streets, they have become not only rude, aggressive places but downright dangerous.

 

The statistics speak volumes: taking robberies alone, between 1991 and 2007, they more than doubled in London (from 22,000 to 46,000). In New York, they fell to less than a quarter (99,000 to 24,000).

 

If New York, through its so-called "zero tolerance" policing, could achieve such startling success (and change the mood of its citizens too) we have to ask: why haven't the policies of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his police chief, William Bratton, been followed here?

 

The only city where they have been implemented was Hartlepool in the mid-1990s by a senior policeman, Det Insp Ray Mallon. He demonstrated decisively that an ordinary English police force could cut crime on a sustained basis by a third. He was subsequently forced out of the police force and became (and remains) the extremely popular and successful Mayor of Middlesbrough.

 

The key elements for the success of zero tolerance on the New York model were, firstly, a dramatic increase in the police force: from under 29,000 in 1993 to more than 40,000 by the year 2000.

 

Then, Bratton's police bore down heavily on the host of "harmless" perpetrators of social nuisance: graffiti artists; over-boisterous drunken youths; aggressive beggars… all the things that the old beleaguered police had decided were not worth bothering about but which proved to be the seedbed in which serious felonies flourished.

 

The final elements were the use of a crime analysis system called Comstat that was used to target crime precisely - and to call commanders to account on their success in reducing crime in their precincts.

 

In Britain, we have seen a rapid rise in the number of policemen in the past 10 years, but the reason they have not achieved success on the New York scale is simple: the number of crimes has shot up, too.

 

The fact that there is now a record number of police is announced and re-announced by ministers, but the disproportion between their numbers and the additional tasks faced by the police is enormous.

 

Source: Sunday Telegraph

Tougher sentencing would be more effective

 

Get rid of ASBO's and put the focus on prison and bring back borstal's with tough regimes

 

Chavs get away with things because they know they are almost untouchable and have to commit hundreds of crimes before they receive any sort of efffective punishment so jail should be used much much more frequently and quicky even if it means building more prisons

I hate the idea of an overly policed nanny state, but I can't deny that it seems to work, and the situation in Britain has reached the point where we DO need drastic measures.

In Britain, we have seen a rapid rise in the number of policemen in the past 10 years, but the reason they have not achieved success on the New York scale is simple: the number of crimes has shot up, too.

 

The fact that there is now a record number of police is announced and re-announced by ministers, but the disproportion between their numbers and the additional tasks faced by the police is enormous.

 

Source: Sunday Telegraph

 

Technically, the statement above is true but not in the way the Telegraph would like you to think. This Government has created over 3000 new criminal offences so in that sense the number of crimes has shot up. However, the number of crimes committed has fallen. Crime hit a peak in 1995 and has been falling ever since. The number of crimes committed has fallen by over 40% since 1995. This isn't relying on any fiddled figures. It is according to the British Crime Survey introduced by the last Tory Government with the support of the other parties. The way they calculate the figures hasn't changed so it is a pretty reliable way of measuring the general trend in the crime figures.

Read the book "Freakonomics" by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner to see why Giuliani's "zero tolerance" policy was complete bullsh!t and had nothing to do with crime reduction.

 

A right wing paper like the Sunday Telegraph is always gonna try to sell you the line that a more restrictive society is "good" for you. Don't fall for it.

A right wing paper like the Sunday Telegraph is always gonna try to sell you the line that a more restrictive society is "good" for you. Don't fall for it.

 

but you can only have a more liberated society if the populace can be relied on not to abuse the freedom. sadly this isnt the case where feral gangs of youths are doing exactly what they want to regardless of the consequences to others.

 

what bothers me most is... how tf are they going to reverse this slide towards anarchy? punishments just dont work.