Tuesday, 25 September 2012

Police Commissioners briefing note

A note from the Commons Library on the political background to the creation of Police Commisioners and the arguments for and against. The sections of interest are 2.1 -2.5 inclusive.

Police Commissioner's Briefing Note

Article: Hillsborough shows it's time for elected police commissioners

Hillsborough shows it's time for elected police commissioners
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/13/hillsborough-scandal-last-23-years

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Monday, 17 September 2012

Crime in the UK

Measuring crime is one of the great intractable problems in politics. Defining a crime is one major problem but even when you have agreed definition problems of measurement remain.

T Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) formerly the British Crime Survey or BCS is a systematic victim study. In the 2010/11 BCS, around 51,000 people were interviewed, that is, around 47,000 adults aged 16 or over in the main survey and a further 4,000 interviews conducted with children aged 10 to 15.

The results were produced on a 4 yearly basis until 2001 since then they have been collected quarterly and published annually.

Another form of measurement is Police Recorded Crime. A comparison of the the figures produced by the 2 methods can be seen below.

Figure 1 Police recorded and CSEW crimes 2011/12, by crime type

The headline crime statistics also draw on other sources including incidents of anti-social behaviour recorded by the police and crimes dealt with by the courts, which are not covered in the main police recorded crime count or by the CSEW.

Box 1.1 Strengths and limitations of the Crime Survey and police recorded crime

Crime Survey for England and Wales		Police recorded crime
Strengths	Limitations	Strengths	Limitations
Large nationally representative sample survey which provides a good measure of long-term trends for the crime types and the population it covers (for example those resident in households)	Survey is subject to error associated with sampling and respondents recalling past events	Has wider offence coverage and population coverage than the CSEW	Excludes offences that are not reported to, or not recorded by, the police and does not include less serious offences dealt with by magistrates courts (e.g. motoring offences)
Consistent methodology over time	Excludes crimes against businesses and those not resident in households (e.g. residents of institutions and visitors)	Good measure of offences that are well-reported to the police	Trends can be influenced by changes in recording practices or police activity
Covers crimes not reported to the police and is not affected by changes in police recording practice; is therefore a better measure of long term trends	Headline estimates exclude offences that are difficult to estimate robustly (such as sexual offences) or that have no victim who can be interviewed (e.g. homicides, and drug offences)	Is the primary source of local crime statistics and for lower-volume crimes (e.g. homicide)	Not possible to make long-term comparisons due to fundamental changes in recording practice introduced in 1998 and 2002/03²
Coverage of survey extended in 2009 to include children aged 10-15 resident in households		Provides whole counts (rather than estimates that are subject to sampling variation)
Independent collection of crime figures		Time lag between occurrence of crime and reporting results tends to be short, providing an indication of emerging trends

Why is there disagreement over crime figures?

Source BBC 14th July 2011

Burglaries up 14% - British Crime Survey

The British Crime Survey suggested there were 9.6 million crimes in England and Wales in 2010-11

Burglaries at homes in England and Wales rose by 14% in 2010-11 compared with the previous year, the British Crime Survey (BCS) suggests.The survey of 45,000 households also indicated overall crime levels were up slightly, though researchers said this was not "statistically significant".

Separate data of crimes recorded by police showed crime fell 4% and domestic burglary was down 4%.

Officials regard the BCS as the most reliable indicator of crime trends.

Recorded crime figures suggested a 10% rise in the number of recorded thefts of unattended mobiles, wallets and purses from pubs, household property from gardens, and metal or industrial equipment. The total number of crimes recorded by police fell by about 100,000 to 4.2 million over the last year.

In contrast, the BCS figures showed there were about 9.6 million crimes overall in 2010-11, compared with 9.5 million the previous year.

Officials advised "caution" over the BCS burglary figures saying the rise to 745,000 followed a record low the previous year of 651,000, and said the current estimate was more in line with those for the previous five years. They said it would be "premature" to view the figure as evidence of a newly rising trend in domestic burglary.

They also said some commentators had expected to see rises in acquisitive crime due to the recession and greater unemployment but there was no firm evidence for this."Despite difficult economic conditions these latest statistics show no consistent evidence of upward pressure across the range of acquisitive crime," the researchers concluded.

But they said both sets of figures indicated that the long-term downward trend in crime since the mid-1990s was "easing".Other figures from the BCS pointed to a big rise in domestic violence, up 35% in a year.

However, officials said the number of domestic violence victims surveyed was small which meant the figures were "prone to fluctuation". Chart shows burglary figures since 2004

Chief Constable Jon Murphy, head of crime for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said officers would be seeking to find any emerging patterns of criminality to the rise in burglaries and thefts. He added that the "significant increase" in metal theft was due to the price of second-hand scrap metal."This has a potentially significant impact on the national critical infrastructure and consequent risk to the public," he added. Simon Reed, vice-chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said: "Today's statistics must serve as a stark warning to government - stop, think and urgently reconsider the 20% cut to the police service."

lick to play

Home Office minister James Brokenshire said: "We have consistently argued that crime is too high and that is why our policing reforms are so urgently needed."

He said reforms would mean communities would have a greater say in local policing priorities, red tape would be cut and the pubic could hold their local force to account daily with the new online street-level crime maps.

The figures could not be used to draw long-term trends nor to link crime to the state of the economy, he added.

"It's a very complicated picture - there is no simple link."

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: "Now is not the time for the government to take risks with community safety by cutting over 12,000 police officers - people want crime to fall further and the government is doing nothing to help."

The BCS only covers England and Wales, with data reported separately in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, the equivalent of the BCS is the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey.

Analysis

Danny Shaw Home affairs correspondent, BBC News

If you're looking for clarity about crime, these figures don't provide it. The two sets of data appear completely at odds.

The BCS estimates that crime in most of the main categories is up - though only the burglary rise is said to be "statistically significant" - whereas almost all offences recorded by police - including burglary - are down.

There's certainly no concrete evidence that the recession is driving crime increases.

But a rise in the police category of "other theft" - which includes thefts of unattended items such as mobile phones and wallets - might be an early sign that people who are feeling the pinch are pinching stuff.

To get a sense of trends in violent crime, it's instructive to look at the figures for homicide (murder, manslaughter, infanticide) which aren't subject to any vagaries in counting methods.

They show that the decade-long downward trend is more or less continuing. The number of attempted murders was at its lowest for many years - an indication that we're not as violent a society as the headlines would have us believe.

The problems of crime reporting

Mark Easton points out how the statistics are read by various groups to suit their agenda. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14156161

A problem with the crime survey approach is seemingly each year those interviewed tell the researchers that they themselves have suffered fewer crimes—but they are adamant that nationally crime is on the rise. This disconnect between experience and perception is the key to the problem of measuring crime.

One reason why BCS figures diverge from public perception is that the survey misses out huge swathes of crime. Interviewers do not ask about rape (sexual offences are surveyed differently) or murder (whose victims are unavailable for comment). The survey does not enumerate crimes against businesses and it under-reports things such as drug offences where the notion of victim is vague. And people under the age of 16 are not interviewed—a serious limitation, since young people are disproportionately likely to be victims.

Police figures also have their shortcomings, starting with the fact that they miss all unreported crimes. Many that are reported are poorly defined. People are particularly concerned about violent crime, for example—but half of all crimes that the police categorise as violent do not end in injury. The report suggests reclassifying these oxymoronic offences—which would mean tidying up oddities such as bigamy and “concealment of birth” as well as the much more prevalent “common assault” and “harassment”, which sound worse than they are.

In particular police figures are untrusworthy because of the socialisation of the police and their shortage of time and resources. The Sociologist Holdaway shows how the police develop an occupational culture which emphasises the notion of police discretion, and how officers are socialised into a particular set of norms and values. The concept of police discretion implies that police officers have discretion – that is, they have the power to turn a ‘blind eye’ to offences when they feel that an offence is too minor to bother taking further action, or perhaps when they feel that the probable outcome will not warrant the effort that will be required on their part. . According to Holdaway, the occupational culture of policing, puts great value on action and aggression. This can lead police officers to focus their activities on particular types of offences, e.g. violent crime at the expense of traffic offences, armed robbery rather than shoplifting.

As a result of these criticisms, sociologists and social historians have talked of the ‘dark figure’ of crime, whilst others have used the metaphor of the iceberg to explain crime statistics. Measured levels of crime, are only levels of reported crime – there is always a ‘dark figure’ of unreported crime. As with icebergs, a small proportion of crime is visible, but the bulk remains hidden from our view.

Sunday, 16 September 2012

Religion and Civil Liberties

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9520026/Christians-should-leave-their-beliefs-at-home-or-get-another-job.html

David Davis and Civil Liberties

Very useful and surprisingly accurate article on David Davis and his by election over Civil Liberties http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Davis_by-election_campaign,_2008

Communications Data Bill

Excellent article on the Communications Data Bill with some useful synoptic elements

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19354126

Article: Nick Clegg's 'bigot' slur tells you everything you need to know about liberals' intolerance

Nick Clegg's 'bigot' slur tells you everything you need to know about liberals' intolerance
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100180532/nick-cleggs-bigot-slur-tells-you-everything-you-need-to-know-about-liberals-intolerance/

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Friday, 7 September 2012

Protection of Freedom Bill

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12536138

Thursday, 6 September 2012

Article: Ed Balls Offers A Big Olive Branch To Vince Cable On The Mansion Tax

Ed Balls Offers A Big Olive Branch To Vince Cable On The Mansion Tax
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/09/06/ed-balls-offers-vince-cable-mansion-tax_n_1860322.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-politics

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Article: Miliband's new big idea: 'Predistribution'

Miliband's new big idea: 'Predistribution'
http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2012/09/06/miliband-s-new-big-idea-predistribution

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Wednesday, 5 September 2012

UK Debt Chart

That shocking UK debt chart
http://coppolacomment.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/ive-been-meaning-to-take-this-chart.html?m=1

Fiscal policy: what does "Keynesian" mean?

Fiscal policy: what does "Keynesian" mean?
http://notthetreasuryview.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/fiscal-policy-what-does-keynesian-mean.html

Tuesday, 4 September 2012

Splits in the coalition: Mansion tax

http://audioboo.fm/boos/938190-senior-tory-hits-out-at-clegg-tax-comments

Civil Liberties: An Overview

Since the 2001 terrorist attacks there have been numerous changes to our civil liberties; the restrictions on our rights have been justified as we apparently need safety before freedom… though have we actually gained either?

Under Blair’s government we saw the introduction of several new laws aimed at tackling terrorism. Detention without charge was first mentioned in the Terrorism Act 2000 then theCriminal Justice Act 2003 and the Terrorism Act 2006. Each act has increased the amount of days by which a suspected terrorist can be detained, from 14 days to 28 days (the government wanted 90 days but was defeated in the Commons). Note the word ‘suspected’; evidence is not a requirement. Between 11 September 2001 and 31 December 2004, 701 were arrested in the UK under the Terrorism Act. Only 17 have been convicted of offences under the act.

In December 2004, a constitutional crisis occurred surrounding the case of several men who were detained in Belmarsh Prison. They successfully argued that their indefinite detention was against Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights which regards a person’s liberty. This was a constitutional matter because the government did not seem to respect judge’s interpretations of human rights within court. The nine men who were being detained either faced torture (if repatriated to their home countries) or indefinite detention in the UK. None of the nine men were subject to any criminal charge. The court did not accept indefinite detention of foreign suspects compared to a 14 day detention of national terror suspects. The UK was found to be in breach of the ECHR.

The British Government introduced a system of control orders to replace indefinite detention, following the outcome of the Belmarsh Detainees Case. Under control orders you can face house arrest for 18 hours a day. Mouloud Sihali faced these grueling control orders a few months after being freed from Belmarsh; he said that the house arrest was even worse than prison. As of March 2007, the British Government reported that 18 control orders were currently in force, eight of which were in respect of British citizens.

You’ll be glad to hear that control orders are no more. In 2011, the government bought in a new system called ‘T-Pims’ Though is it all that different? The Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act . still allows charge without trial, secret evidence that cannot be challenged and house arrest. These bills come into place on the basis of protecting our human rights though the latter still infringes our right to liberty.

Of course it is understandable that after such horrific attacks on New York, worldwide governments have to show that they are tackling the threat of terrorism, though the increased power of the police has been abused. In 2005, Jean Charles de Menezes was shot by police as they believed he was a suicide bomber; they were able to shoot him under Operation Kratos which refers to tactics for dealing with suspected bombers. He was innocent and the police had given incorrect statements as to his actions and how he was dressed, making him appear more culpable than he actually was. Another example of unnecessary police tactics was when senior Labour Party member, Walter Wolfgang, was forcibly ejected from an annual Labour Party Conference in 2005 for shouting “nonsense” during Jack Straws speech on the Iraq War. He was detained under the Terrorism Act 2000.

Our right to protest has been dramatically reduced in terms of where we can protest and need for police permission beforehand. Somewhat reducing the point of a protest. The UK government even has the power to state any part of the UK as a no protest zone.

Many of the laws bought in during the Blair governments. have phenomenally reduced our civil liberties. The majority of what we consider to be our basic human rights can infact be overturned by one anti-terrorism law or another. Such is the case for freedom of speech, right to a fair trial and a right to life. Returning to the question of whether safety or freedom is more important, whatever your answer may be, it seems that sacrificing your freedom provides no correlation with increased safety.

But alas, there is hope… The coalition has introduced a Protection of Freedoms Bill to erase the database state which we saw under Blair’s governments. A few of its provisions include: terrorist suspects will be held for 14 days, as appose to the current 28, police stop and search powers will be restricted and measures which allow serious fraud trials without a jury will be scrapped.

Wider reading:

Justice and Security Bill 2012

How National Security can be used as an excuse to curtail Civil Liberties. A Liberal view:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/09/secret-justice-bill

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/17/henry-porter-government-invading-our-privacy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18251642

A more Conservative view.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/9396341/Sir-John-Sawers-Secret-courts-necessary-to-stop-wannabe-terrorists-finding-out-MI6s-secrets.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/9297650/Balancing-national-security-with-justice.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9202957/Some-secrets-must-be-kept-and-no-one-needs-to-apologise-for-that.html