We must take back our streets...

[looney]

Its a popular leftwing myth that people wont vote for tougher law and order "because of Higher taxes".

For starters the yanks jail more people than us and they have lower taxes.

It tends to be a case of just measuring costs in prison terms but there are also savings that are not mentioned.

Lower insurance as crime falls in crime ridden areas.

Preventative savings, the cost of dealing with repeat offenders.
This is also dependent on busting the other leftwing Myth that prison doesn't work, it does.

Then there are Quality of life costs.

 

[Dr Bandler]

Not sure about that as all i remember were riots all over, the result of Thatchers Suss policy. But now im turning in circles, i agreed with everything in your earlier post, but how to implement this may lead to more problems than we are trying to remove..

I agree that it has to be carefully implemented. The answer is to ask people who have already done it - like Ray Mallon in Middlesbrough and Rudi Guiliani / William Bratton in New York.

Guiliani was insistent that alongside tough polciing the force was non-corrupt and non-racist. This was rooted out. He believed you could only be tough if seen to be clean. Not sure that was seen to be case in the Brixton crackdowns.

Anyway - what is the choice - just carry on doing nothing?

 

[Dr Bandler]

Yes, but NY isn't like other places, and certainly isn't like the rest of the US. As far as I remember, Schwarzeneggar was voted in on a promise to lower taxes. It's just that he ended up having to raise them anyway, and now everybody hates him over there.


She wasn't able to push through everything she was determined about. Remember her hatred of football and the disastrous ID card scheme that everyone outside football was in favour of? Oh, and the ordinary fans' friend Ken Bates, of course, who seemed to want watchtowers and sirens replacing the floodlights, and packs of wild wolves in trenches around the pitch. I might be exaggerating a little there.
I remember one election, possibly during Thatcher's time, when the Liberals put in their manifesto that they would put tax up by 1 penny in order to get the NHS back to the way it should be. Needless to say, they didn't win.
Every politician in this country knows that a promise to put up taxes is an immediate vote-loser. Doesn't matter how much or how little. If Labour, in their next election manifesto, proposed a 1p rise on the basic rate in order to 'reclaim our streets' or whatever, the Daily Mail, Express, Telegraph and The Sun would go absolutely mental. They'd be out on their ear in no time. If the Tories did the same, they'd lose by a bigger margin than in 1997.

Let me be clear that I detest much of what Thatcher did. Maybe I shouldnt have used such a controversial character for my point. What I want to get across is the lack of determination of current politicians to deal with this. This seems to be a down to a mixture of:

They don't understand / care what is really going on
They do understand but will not pay for the solution (as already discussed)
They do understand but are afraid of upsetting civil rights campaigners / do-gooders

 

[Buzzer]

The book Freakonomics actually attempts to debunk the Guiliani zero tolerance policy or rather the effects of it. Apparently, the introduction of, effectively, abortion on demand a generation or two before was more likely the cause of the drop in crime figures.

 

[Dr Bandler]

Reply

If you look at New York's reduction in crime in isolation you can give alternative theories, but how would you account for Hartlepool's and then Middlesbrough's crime reductions under Ray Mallon's zero tolerance policing?

Mallon was voted "Man of The Year" in Cleveland for giving people back a sense of security and freedom from street crime. Lets be clear - if nothing is done, it will be the law-abiding majority who will have their rights to peace denigrated.

 

[sten_super]

The book Freakonomics actually attempts to debunk the Guiliani zero tolerance policy or rather the effects of it. Apparently, the introduction of, effectively, abortion on demand a generation or two before was more likely the cause of the drop in crime figures.

Admittedly it's been a while since I read the book, but from my recollection it does nothing to attempt to 'prove' it's point. It merely says "look, the number of abortions went up, the crime rate went down'. There is no econometric/statistical analysis. While the book is entertaining, it is deliberately spurious; take for example the section where he points out that a childs name is an accurate reflection of the number of years the mother spent in education.

Getting back on topic, I think it's hard to dismiss the idea that a tough stance on crime and criminals will have a positive effect on the crime rate. I wonder if the politicians will realise this before the ASBO-appreciating masses take over to such a degree that this policy would become unpopular. It would have to take some serious sea-change in the political landscape to bring about any similar policy at the moment.