Crime won’t fall until prevention is favoured once again

As always with these initiatives, they're designed to trick the voters into thinking that they're tough on crime.

Unfortunately, the new initiatives announced by Boris Johnson to try and tackle anti-social behaviour and crime are nothing but gimmicks.

As always with these initiatives, they're designed to trick the voters into thinking that they're tough on crime. Generally, there has been a major misconception throughout the last thirty years of government policy relating to crime and disorder, in that reacting to crime is the best way of reducing it. This modern, progressive thinking has tossed aside the age-old, traditional and proven way of managing crime, which was proactive and led by people who were concerned with authority, liberty and protecting life and property - a way which focused on crime prevention rather than crime solution.

Let's take the three major parts of the announcement. Firstly, the idea that neighbourhoods should have a named local police officer. On paper, this sounds great. But what are the practicalities? Given that there are no visible police officers on the streets, how will it help? Police officers should be there to patrol the streets giving a visible presence, not waiting on the other side of the telephone taking a call that your car has been vandalised. What happens then? The officer has to follow up all the calls, creating more paperwork, thus tracking, rather than preventing, the crime in his area - making him less visible to the public.

Then, there was the announcement that there would be more support for victims. Again, this seems like a vote winner - pitting the Government on the side of the people against the criminal. But what of it? Do people actually want to be victims of crime (and get the extra support) in the first place? Policies that offer more support for the victims of crime are actually defeatist in their thinking. What's the point in saying "I'm sorry you've been burgled again Mrs Brown, here's another arm around your shoulder to cry on?" By perpetually chasing criminals and their crimes, instead of trying to stop them in the first place, you're only ever going to create more victims.

The Government might have tried at least to see through this by (laughably) creating a new league table for 999 response times. Yes, because that will definitely make us sleep better at night! The cynic in me wants to think that ministers have our best interests at heart, but I am laboured to say that announcing quicker response times for police to attend a burglary is likely driven by the dreadful statistics of burglary detection and attendance. But, once again, the Government has got this completely wrong. People don't want to be burgled in the first place. What good is a police officer after the event? They can't get your possessions back or put your house back together, nor can they alleviate the fear people have once they've become a victim. It won't help that a police officer takes two days to attend a burglary rather than four.

As a side note, do we want more CCTV? No one seems ever to question the effectiveness of it. In fact, I'd go as far to say that they are used as a smokescreen to make us feel safer, when in fact they do largeky nothing for crime prevention. CCTV is a largely impotent tool - the person sat behind the camera can't do anything other than raise the alarm, often after the crime has taken place. How many crimes have we seen take place on CCTV? In any case, in this time of post-Covid big government overreach, who thinks more CCTV will not be a threat to liberty?

Finally, probably the most hilarious gimmick of all is the idea that criminals will be made to wear high viz jackets and work in chain gangs. Could there be a better metaphor for the illusion of a tough criminal justice system than this? I can't think of one.

Prisons are also symbols of our reactive criminal justice system. Let's not forget that you have to commit an untold number of offences before you're sent there. Visit any prison and you'll see gigantic warehouses run by the criminals, where bullying, phones and drugs are rife. The authorities are not in charge. Chain gangs perpetuate this tough on crime Illusion.

The real test of any government initiative on crime is how it makes you feel. Will you feel safer in your own home? Will you still see the same feral teenagers hanging around, causing chaos on your estate? Will anti-social crimes actually go down? My guess is no, and gimmicks like we've seen this week won't change a thing.