Rape, politics and populism

It is fair to say that nobody is going to feel much sympathy for the poor rapists, whom the Tories targeted in yesterday’s announcement. They plan a review of sentencing – “review” being political code for “lengthening”.

There may very well be grounds for a review. If Theresa May is correct, sentences have been falling over the past three years; if this is due to changes in, or poor application of, the law then a review is warranted. Similarly, if Mr. Cameron is correct that “as many as one in two young men believe there are some circumstances when it's okay to force a woman to have sex” then there is an urgent need to tackle the causes.

I have two reasons for feeling uncomfortable, however.

The fist reason for concern is that being tough on criminals is to politics what a steep gully is to water; it is the path of least resistance. Few people have any sympathy for criminals, and rapists in particular engender very strong feelings of anger among large numbers of people. It is thus all-too-easy to achieve what political analysts call “valancy”, a sense among people that a politician thinks like they do, by taking a tough line on crime.

We have seen the upshot of this after ten years of Blairism (which if it exists as a philosophy at all is the belief that the primary goal is to remain in power, from which good must eventually follow). On average a new crime was created every day during the Blair years; there are 170,000 new pages of law; and our gaols are now bursting at the seems because of longer minimum sentences. Yet there is no evidence that we feel safer.

Which brings me on to my second reason for hesitancy: that one cannot change attitudes through legislation. I agree with Mr. Cameron that it is appalling (and indeed shocking) that up to half of young men think that a circumstance could exist where it would be acceptable to force somebody to have sex. However, I think the point is both a wider and an older one; that there are still many people in society who think that it is acceptable to use force to compel others to do anything. Rape is a particularly unpleasant example, but there are plenty of other instances where people are forced or bullied into obeying others. It is this general attitude that we should be addressing; rape is merely one symptom of a more prevalent disease.

Yet, as I have argued before, the law is not the solution (though we must in the meantime criminalise such behaviour so as to protect citizens both through incarcerating the abusers and deterring those who might abuse). People do not change their attitudes because something becomes illegal; indeed, legislation is only necessary because people have not been persuaded. What is necessary is to address the root causes – the beliefs of those who believe that force is justified in getting what they want. Unsurprisingly, the coercive power of the state will not achieve that goal.

So while I agree with Mr. Cameron that school is a perfect environment to address these attitudes, I would hope that our education establishments would go beyond focusing on sex education, and instead address the whole issue of freedom from compulsion, to instil in our children an understanding of why it is wrong to force people to do things against their will.

In the meantime, by all means address low conviction rates or inadequate sentences that result from failures in the system. But do not make political capital out of seeking to be seen to be “tough on crime”. Toughness may win the brief adulation of voters, but in the long run what they want is to be safe and secure. That would be popular without being populist.

"Together We Can Cut Crime": rejecting the policy paper

In four days time the Liberal Democrat federal conference will have the opportunity to debate and vote upon the law and order policy paper, Together We Can Cut Crime. This is a worthy attempt to tackle the perception of rising lawlessness in our society and to genuinely bring down rates of criminality and especially re-offending. Sadly, in the process it brushes aside too many of our fundamental principles and seeks centralising and patronising solutions. It needs amending. Failing that, it needs rejecting.

To be fair, the paper really isn’t that bad. It tries hard, and many of its suggestions are really rather good. So I will dwell first on these strong points. Section 3, on crime prevention, is really quite good: a review of ASBOs and a focus on establishing responsible behaviour contracts before behaviour deteriorates are long overdue – it is almost forgotten now that the police were originally set up to prevent crime, rather than catch offenders. Addressing repeat victimisation is sensible, as is boosting the capacity of police to recognise and deal with metal health issues and the proposal to appoint dedicated youth officers in each ward.

Similarly, section 4 on punishment, reform and rehabilitation is excellent. For too long the prison system has been viewed as a means of punishing offenders and protecting society rather than reforming characters and enabling criminals to lead constructive, law-abiding lives. Prisoners are the ultimate captive audience: they can be obliged to attend lessons to teach them literacy (only one in five can cope with an application form, according to section 4.2.10), numeracy and perhaps a trade.

But other parts of the paper are less strong, falling as policy papers all-too-often do into the traps of all governments-in-waiting: centralism and micromanagement.

Take, for example, section 2.1.4: “Licensing regimes should also be used to ensure responsible behaviour… We propose: Requiring local authorities [to] have regard to ensuring an appropriate ratio of seated to standing areas in all pubs, bars and clubs…” An ironic twist for a party that is promising a Great Repeal Act, a bonfire of the regulatory vanities. The same is true of the previous clause, to extend the House in Multiple Occupancy licensing regime to include minimum security standards. There may be evidence to suggest that these will reduce crime, but it is rather incongruous that these two proposals immediately follow the statement (2.1.2) that “We are reluctant to over-regulate, especially where stipulating design standards…”

Sadly, over-regulating is exactly what this is about. Local authorities are to be given the powers to tell publicans, private clubs and landlords how much floor-space must be set aside for seating and what types of locks must be used. Never mind that publicans are serving the publics desires, or for that matter that the amount of revenue they generate per square foot of floor-space depends on a goodly proportion of their customers standing. Their profitability, like that of so many small businesses, is to be sacrificed on the alter of the regulator. “Licence holders and their staff need to take the lead in promoting a responsible attitude to drinking…” says 2.3.4, but they are not to be trusted to do so without regulation.

Similarly, the ability of tenants to consider for themselves whether they wish to pay extra for heightened security features, or would like to go to a busy, lively venue where there is standing room only (or for that matter, dancing-room only) is not to be trusted; these poor fools don’t know what’s good for them!

If individuals are not to be trusted to make their own decisions, neither are local authorities. Councils are to be “required to have a designated website to allow local residents to express their concerns and review… progress” (2.1.7). This is not a decision to be taken by local councillors; neither are local electors free to choose whether this is a better use of council resources than care for the elderly or better recycling or even (heavens!) other crime-prevention initiatives. Government knows best. The decision to base PCSOs in schools (3.1.2) sounds like a good idea, but should this not be the decision of local authorities and local police boards, responding to particular needs, rather than a central government diktat that assumes that every area suffers youth crime?

Then there is the target setting. One of the greatest problems with the Labour Government has been its obsession with setting targets that reflect the views of bureaucrats rather than the needs of deliverers; that deflect service providers from responding to the needs of their patients or pupils or the citizens they serve. “Setting and average of 90 days between arrest and trial” (5.1.5) and dictating call centre response rates (2.4.7) is no different from the Blair/Brown target setting we have suffered for a decade: maximum waits become uniform waits, and attention to other, perhaps more urgent problems is subsumed by the desire to tick the Whitehall boxes. The faith in the national plan and the wisdom of departmental officials flies in the face of our commitment (in both policy papers and, more importantly, in our ideological foundations) to trust individuals, local providers and county and municipal authorities to make decisions in their own interests and that of their local area.

Finally, and most egregiously, there is the section on the victims’ compensation fund. Section 5.4.4 states that “Liberal Democrats sign up to the principle that victims of crime should be entitled to some compensation whether this is obtained from the perpetrator… or… is paid by the state…” This is absolute nonsense. While there is a compelling case for requiring offenders to make reparations to their victims (both as compensation and as a means of demonstrating to them the personal harm they caused their victim), there is absolutely no reason why the state should act as an insurer-of-last-resort, soothing with money the pain meted out by criminals.
Compensation is not a liberal principle. It is the offspring of a paternalism that believes that the state should be a shoulder to cry upon and a nurse-maid to provide a sticking-plaster for the poor, crying child that is the citizen. Of course we feel compassion for the victim; we would be heartless if we did not. But the victim’s financial losses should be met by offenders and private insurers. The state’s efforts should be devoted solely to ensuring that crime is prevented and criminals brought to justice. If there is a spare pound, it should be spent on the two, primary purposes of Government: to provide a stable legal framework in which we can all live peacefully, and to protect the citizen from harm. It is not to act as nanny.

This paper, in current form, is not worthy of being adopted by a liberal political party. It ignores the principles that the party has set out in other policy papers and the philosophical basis of our beliefs: that the individual must be free of meddling officialdom; that decisions are best taken at the most localised level, nearest the citizen; and that the state exists to protect, not to mother, the individual.

Together We Can Cut Crime is not a disappointment because it is entirely wrong. Worse than that, it is a disappointment because much of it is right. But it is marred by illiberal micro-management and patronising paternalism. It desperately needs to be revised. Until then, it must be rejected.

Let down by the BBC (again!)

I am bitterly disappointed to discover that the BBC do not archive news programmes and that as such old URLs now take viewers to a new item.

On a few occasions I have included clips from the BBC in my postings, most notably when I was urging readers to listen to Roman Halter, an Auschwitz survivor, describe how wonderful he found Britain after the war and how much he cherished our strong tradition of liberty. His eloquent eulogising of freedom of speech was all the more poignant as he was arguing that the Holocaust-denier David Irving should be free to write and say that Mr. Halter and his deceased relatives were figments of a Zionist plot.

On another occasion I used clips to support my criticism of the confusion between “anti-social behaviour” and actual crime.

Sadly these and other clips are no longer available, and the links now take one to the latest version of that news programme (be it One O’clock or Ten O’clock News) as broadcast on the day one clicks the URL, not back to the original programme that generated the URL when I wrote the article.

This is a shame. Good internet practice, especially in this most ephemeral of media, urges content providers to maintain good archives, and websites not to change URLs, for this very reason. I cannot believe that if YouTube can store thousands of new videos a day, the BBC cannot store its (surely much-more-popular) news items.

My apologies to readers who have been left confused and frustrated.

The Ecstasy and the agony

There is an odd article in Times 2 today. Under the none-too-original heading The Ecstasy and the agony comes the subtitle As the first wave of Ecstasy users reach their forties, research suggests the drug can cause long-term brain damage. At last, one might be forgiven for thinking, conclusive evidence that Ecstasy is a harmful narcotic. Except that the bulk of the article paints a far more mixed and indeed contrary picture.

It begins by pointing out the deficiencies in most existing scientific research: the read-over from lab rats to humans is not applicable; the purported link to Parkinson’s disease was based on a confusion between MDMA and methamphetamine; most “drug casualties” have used a wide variety of legal and illegal intoxicants in massive doses, thus rendering it impossible to draw conclusive links between any single cause and an effect.

Instead, the article casts serious doubts on evidence of any long-term risk. While between one and two million people were dropping a pill a week in the UK, there were less than 20 deaths a year – and these from secondary effects rather than from the toxicity of the drug. According to Valerie Curran, Professor of Psychopharmacology at University College, London, “If you look at people who have given up for a year, there’s very little evidence of damage that persists”.

The problem is most tellingly captured by John Henry, Professor of Accident and Emergency Medicine at Imperial College, London. “I wanted to start research on the effects of Ecstasy years ago and they told me, ‘don’t be an idiot’. I really think that if we studied schoolchildren and found out who used E and then followed them up to see what happens, we’d have the answers by now.”

Professor Henry goes on to imply that there has been minor cognitive damage (“one or two or three IQ points”) which has effected in excess of a million users. This adds up to a lot of lost intellectual capital, but the real message here is that Government’s heavy-handed blanket ban on the drug has impeded research into the long term effects.

The truth is that thirty years after it was banned in the UK and twenty after it became the party-drug of choice for the all-night dancer, we continue to know very little about the risks. As with cannabis and other narcotics, prohibition has exacerbated rather than alleviated the problem. Scientific research is difficult as one cannot give willing volunteers the drug. It is not easy to find long-term users because they are inevitably covert about their use. Meanwhile, the criminals that feed the demand are unscrupulous; they do not have quality control, they are not regulated, and the customer has little come-back if s/he is harmed by their product. People who fear they are suffering a negative effect often hide their use from emergency services. Seeking help for long-term use is stigmatised and may leave a trace on medical records that will have other social and economic costs. Rather than protecting citizens, prohibition drives up to two million of them to deal with criminals every week – and this is just the Ecstasy users. The billions of pounds they generate feed organised crime on Britain’s streets and fund murderous civil wars in South East Asia and elsewhere.

Professor Curran sums up the domestic case for a more intelligent and liberal approach: “We should accept that people are gong to take drugs and say: ‘Here is the science. Here is the risk-benefit profile. It’s your informed choice.’ Instead we’re in this crazy world where everything is pushed underground and drugs are put in the hands of criminals. I’m not saying we should legalise – that’s a big step – but in Holland, where there are coffee shops [for cannabis use] there haven’t been any major disasters through making cannabis available”.

It is not in the character of Labour or Conservative governments to trust people to make informed decisions about their own desires and the risks they face. They tend instead to treat individuals like children, to be swaddled and protected from all risk. The result is a thriving criminal underworld, misery exported to the Third World, and a future public health situation about which the scientific and medical authorities have no knowledge. Prohibition has failed.

Crime is not “Anti-social behaviour”

The BBC reported today (6 minutes and 10 seconds into the One O’clock News) that 55% of offenders are ignoring their Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), 35% repeatedly. Yet as the footage (6 minutes and 47 seconds) in the report demonstrates, the behaviour being exhibited may be anti-social, but it should not be being dealt with by using behaviour orders.

Breaking into cars; smashing window; throwing rocks at vehicles and passers by; theft: this is not “Anti-social behaviour”, it is crime. Children committing these kind of offences should be arrested and prosecuted. It is not necessary to send them to prison or a young offenders institute – adult prisons are already bulging with men who were given custodial sentences in their youth. But it is not enough to slap ASBOs on children who have been committing serious criminal offences.

Instead, they should be arrested, prosecuted, and then given community sentences. Hard, disciplined and valuable work to improve their local community – cleaning up litter, clearing graffiti – would be more effective than a paper ban on visiting the local park, and less likely to lead to further criminality than a custodial sentence. They should also be made to make recompense to the victims of their action, making them apologise to their victims and listen to how much distress they caused. Young offenders also need more effective social work and constructive activities. Most of all, they need to be given a sense of responsibility.

Shaun Bailey, a youth worker with the charity My Generation, whom the One O’clock News interviewed, was scathing of politicians attempts to understand the causes of crime: “‘Understanding the causes of crime’ is years long. We’ll never do it, because we live in a PC world where we can’t address our real issues… family breakdown, poor unemployment prospects, the fact that we live in a prevailing situation, now, that says that everybody’s a victim. Everybody’s a victim. Until we break that, we say to people ‘Actually, you need to raise your own personal standards’, then we’ll never deal with these problems.”

This is unexpected stuff from somebody who works closely with troubled children. Usually one associates youth workers with a mentality that blames structures and circumstances for criminality, rather than individuals and the choices they make. But Mr. Bailey is correct. While poverty, family breakdown and poor school performance present children with challenges, these do not in themselves cause anti-social or criminal behaviour. Many children do not turn to crime; some become leading lights in their community or go on to be very successful.

If we are to break the ‘cycles of deprivation’ that confront us, we certainly do need to tackle the problems of inner-city schools, urban blight, unemployment and youth poverty. But we also need to stop making excuses for the selfish and harmful choices that some people make. Individuals must take responsibility for their actions. It is essential that this is taught at an early age.