Crime

In so many many ways the actions and attitutes of those who matter are so badly wrong when it ocmes to dealing with crime.
First of all the government, again staggeringly complacent and out of touch, cannot bring itself to admit the scale of the problem of rising violent crime. Government lackeys just shrug their shoulders when another young person is stabbed or shot on our streets. Thats just the way it is, they sniff in patronising tones, before launching into a meaningless and breathtakingly insulting tirade of statistics in a vain attempt to instill the belief that all this shooting, stabbing and anti-social behaviour is really just in our imagination. Well it isn't. Next time you go to the shops or use public transport, you'll see how far removed and totally detached from reality most of these politicians are in their ivory towers insulated from the more unpleasant aspects of real life.
On a personal level, many of the people in this country are now lacking in moral courage. Some are justifiably too frightened to intervene. Others are just plain cowardly. Our walk-on-by, look-away, look after ourselves first society doesnt help. All of us tolerate bad attitudes, rudeness and lack of respect for older people.
Parents of misbehaving youths are also deeply culpable becasue they have probably imbued their young tearaways with their own feral, feckless lifestyles. Society is structured in the wrong way because it encourages young unemployed single mothers to have children without consequences. Children who grow up without fathers are generally morel ikely to get into trouble, They dont know any limits but they certainly know their rights and the police are largely inept or powerless to enforce any authority. We indulge misbehaving young people too much, and all too willingly make excuses for bad behaviour which don't involve taking resonsibility for actions which inevitably have consequences. And the compensation culture is partly to blame.
The police have become next to useless. Surely their very first purpose in any civilsied society is to protect the public, something they often fail to do. With some wonderful exceptions, they (or rather their leaders) seem more concerned with protecting themselves before they protect the public! Sure they've got lots of paerwork to do, procedures to follow, health and safety regulations to comply with. But it is the hands-off laissez faire attitude to criminals which is most damaging.
Allocation of policing resources need to seriously and critically reviewed. I get the feeling there is too much emphasis on too much triviality - paperwork, procedures, regulations to be ocmplied with, training methods to be followed to the letter of the law rather than the spirit of it.
And one consequence of the police failing to properly enforce the law is that more and people will take it into their own hands to enforce it for themselves. And who can blame them? There's no point ringing the the police - I know from experience - they just give you a crime number and mutter platitudes that unless you have ready-made evidence of a suspect they won't do anything.
Schools have lost the abiltiy to instill discipline and respect largely because teachers live in fear of lawyers and aggressive parents, and also because head teachers cannot be trusted by central government to run their schools autonomously. And why is truancy so high also? A disruptive or expelled child usually knows its rights will prevail over that of the school to enforce the authority of teachers. This is very dangerous.
The courts. Why are courts so slow, wastefulyl expensive and inefficient at administering justice? I've never particualry understood either how so many lawyers can be so morally bankcrupt in defending people they know to be adanger to the public. More judges should be more in touch with the consequences of everyday crime on members of the public. And of course it owuld help enormously if the government could actually manage to properly lock up convicted criminal and build enough prison places, especially after it has spent year upon year announcing 'tough' new crackdown legislation which is tremndously effective at securing front page headlines in The Sun, but less effective in actually protecting the public.
We treat our criminals better than our soldiers and we should all be deeply ashamed about that. I know from a source who works inside prisons what soft, comfortable places they have become. Many potential criminals don't live in fear of going there or staying there. Prisons also fail miserably to rehabilitate (perhaps for the same reason). The government wanted to send more people to prison but it failed to build any more prison space, so prisons are now overcrowded and rife with drugs. Its is staggering incompetence.
When it comes the crime, the critical theme which should always be the first thought in everybody's mind is the protection of the public. So called infringements of criminals' human rights comes right at the bottom of the list. Essentially, we need to bring back the element of meaningful proportionate punishment and deterrent for committing crime so those who do still commit crime will be more aware that their actions will certianly have consequences.
Finally, the way that we all indulge or tolerate low level anti-social behaviour inevitably has in it the seeds that one day lead to more serious and more violent crimes.