Making crime not pay... it's a question of integrated services, respect and punishement
Strange ways of laws and life.
In eastern culture, most crime is violently repressed. Algeria, the cops sport AK74's. Saudi, nick somthing, lose a hand... and you can only repeat offend and get caught once...
Saddam Hussein : A part from the genocidal maniac, how many other countries could Jews,Christians, Persians and Arabs get along without cutting each others throats? Probably because the Governement cut the troublemakers throat first. It tends to be dissuasive (and has the advantage of not overpopulating the prisons).
How was crime dropped in New York? A cop on every street corner. OK, they had to massively employ, but it worked. Today you may only get 4 bales of crap beat out of you rather than killed in the subway.
From what I see, the problems are (and are similar here in France):
- Not enough coppers on the beat
- Red tape supplied on 1000 metre drums by the home office
- Once a perp gets caught, 2 hours later he is back on the street waving 2 fingers at the station. Why bother nicking him in the first place?
- If he does go in front of a beak, then there is a large chance that they are let off. Again, why bother?
- If the beak does sentence, the prisons are probably the best school of crime around...
So, a simple 4 point plan is needed
1) Get the police out on the streets doing a preventive job. An incident number after a crime is not what I call "showing the force", especially if you are that now-stuffingless 90 year old...
Doing that means getting *efficient* procedures online. Nick someone, fingerprint, maybe dna, name, rank number and get CPS involved like within the hour for petty crime (point 2) or a judge for any mainline stuff (point 3)
2) Kickstart CPS with a bleeding great boot. They are supposed to prevent crime, not push paper. Analyse the crime, and then punish, taking in account of age, previous criminal record. Make CPS a sort of small clams / traffic court with a judge. Give community service sentences and 1 month Community service as a minimum sentence if proven guilty. Get them repairing the British rail network replacing track, use them as slave labour, painting handrails, somthing useful. If they skip, then on to point 3.
3) Kickstart the justice system. If a perpetrator of a crime is not processable by CPS either by magnitude or repetition, then the judge must take a firmer view, but respecting innocence until proven guilty.
A case shoud not be dismissed by lack of time or not bothered to sit on the trial, and if they are guilty, then punishment must be handed out.
4) Kickstart the prison service. Prisons are probably as I mentionned the best school of crime around. No hotel prisons. It's not supposed to be nice, but different grades for different crimes (like a simple open one for housing the yoofs on community service. No, they should not go home in the evening, it's part of the punishment), but do not take hope away. Get people to fit back in to society, and help them do that, not just kick them out the door after a few years.
Give them values and make them want to do somthing.
OK, it will not work for all, but in the list, 1) gets the coppers motivated to do their jobs if they can do it better, faster, and know that when a perp is handed off up the chain, everyone will do their jobs respecting the jobs of the people down the line, and showing victims and the public the necessity of showing law and order being applied fairly and equally.
2) gets a swift hearing for purse snatching and red-handed granny bashers. Open and shut case first offenders, and gets the buggers out doing somthing simple, probably boring, but useful, even for unqualified "labour".
3) Makes sure that any repeat offenders get heard, processed and if guilty, sentenced according the the gravity of the crime. No tolerance or get out of jail free unless you are innocent. No dropping of cases because you cant be bothered (and ignore again the victim and spit on the time spent by the police getting the guy in front of the beak)
4) If the guilty have to be locked up, make sure that prison has a positive action of "not wanting to go back", and knowing that if you slip up, you *will* go back, and also make sure that prison is also used for re-education, fixing whatever made them screw up in the first place.
Crime must not pay, and it must be seen not to pay. Today, it seems that it does pay, and that there is no prevention... And fitting the police with PDA's and machine guns is good publicity, but it's not getting their mission done, and it's not in any way getting the rest of the legal chain (CPS, courts, prisons, help associations) running smoothly.
Again, if the government spent less on the Global War on Suspected Terrorists and concentrated that cash on what was really needed....
Na, ain't going to happen is it?
Cheers,
Daniel