The Cellar - Increase in violent crime

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Increase in violent crime

It's easy to get dragged along by the media - like when there's one story of a a dog attacking a baby then suddenly there are three others about the same issue within days. Violent crime in the UK seems however to belong in a different category - we're seeing reports of youth-driven knife (and gun) killings two or three times a week, two even reported today - one a priest/vicar murdered in his own church grounds in Wales, and then a young boy attacked and killed in the west side of London.

Why so much knife and gun crime? Probably a combination of factors, certainly a fair share emanates from poorly thought-through legislation that paradoxically was meant to improve not destroy our way of life. For my part I see the breakdown of the family as one major area - no longer encouraged by our current government and in fact single or separate living is rewarded more by the benefits system. Loss of a balanced upbringing and the difficulties for the lone parent delivering desired results

Then there is the obsession our government has with targets - They're OK if they are carefully applied to address the real problem, but this is so seldom the case - 'tell me how you measure me and I will show you how I will act' is a phrase I have heard used to describe just how easily the wrong motivator can generate the wrong result. For our police it's a case of a target for the number of solved crimes - the more unsolved crimes left on your register the lower your rating, and there is naturally a battle to improve ratings. So why bother trying to solve the difficult time-consuming crimes when that is going to affect your ratings? - get 'em in the book! and that sadly means dealing with and looking for simple crimes to solve, like household disturbances, motoring offences and such-like. Then, of course there's the bureacracy that goes with an arrest or incident taking police time away from the job of finding the culprits.

Add large dashes of political correctness gone mad, lost opportunities to learn, absence of positive motivation, and loss of respect and responsibilty and you have the breeding ground amongst the young for gang culture spawning weapon bravado and drugs-inspired violence.

Government/political solutions at best seem to trim the problem at the edges: ASBOs that become status symbols, reward schemes that end up being abused and so on, with little attempt, energy or resources to look for and deal with the problem at its root.

God, I must be beginning to sound like Victor Meldrew, but has it always been really this bad? And will there ever be anyone with enough common-sense in power to know how to deal with this dangerously fast-escalating problem?

Increase in violent crime?

I don't believe it. ;)

Because it is a myth.
We are safer than we have ever been and getting better every day.
There is less violence in schools, on our streets in our homes, everywhere.
Stop watching cable television.

That may be true in the USA but I don't know about Britain.

Look up the stats for the last twenty years. I'll bet you will be surprised.

Population increase leads to crime increase. That is, a proportionate increase. Also, bad news sells a lot better than good.

Don't pay attention to the media for a true indication of facts. Do some research and find out the truth for yourself.

I think there is a distinct difference now in the UK compared to say a generation ago - there's always been violence and in the past we would often here of unwarranted attacks, beatings and street fights, but not the seemingly wider-spread fatality that we are witnessing today - killings tended to be more the province of the organised gangland like the Krays, and the 'justifiable' payback of that culture. This feels, and certainly appears, different. There's a downward spiral feel to it - one negative leading to a another and another and with no effective remedy currently available.

I used to worry about the increase in violent crimes but then I realized it was easier to just shoot the messengers who tell us about it. :D

Violent crimes enrage me. They make me want to strangle the life out of the perpetrators, then burn down their houses and kill their families...

For the humor-impaired, that was a joke. However, violent crime is no joke. Here in KC, we've got a bona-fide gang war going on, with gangstas capping each other in their cars and homes almost daily. The cops have stated that the vast majority of our homicides over the past few months are all related to one single ongoing war. They've even identified the alleged ringleader responsible for either doing the shooting, or sending minions to carry out same.

I wish they'd all just kill each other off so the rest of us can get back to being decent citizens.

..and if even much-massaged government figures admit an increase then we know how much worse it must be in reality!

It's odd that burglary, which was previously the bigger crime problem, is down just as much as violent crime is up:

http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/page7.asp

The thugs stopped nicking anything not nailed down, and instead started stabbing people?

Is this actually a drugs problem in disguise? The US sees increases in murders during times when prohibition is more harshly enforced. When there's more profit in running a drug trade, people pay a higher price in lives.

If you throw a trend line across the trafficking graph you get an increase but nothing as abrupt as the violence...

Toad I think that is reported violent crimes. If you look here you get the numbers from the crime survey which they claim are more accurate. Maybe they're doing the neighborhood watch stuff and it is more cool to report crime?

rape is through the roof...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Griff (Post 323650)

The trouble is it's a survey and we don't know enough about the sample size, the areas covered or the types of people interviewed - however, according to the notes, we do know that it 'includes common assault, wounding, robbery and snatch theft. It does not include homicide (as the victims cannot be surveyed) and other types of violent crime, like firearms offences' - so the things that really matter like escalating gun and knife crime appear not to be included anyway. The quoted massive drop in crimes by 43% in the mid 90's is considered more to be as a result of a change in the type and way the data is collected rather than to a sudden massive improvement in policing. Also the graph raises the point that too many people are either afraid to report a violent crime for fear of repercussions (as was the case in the Damilola Taylor murder - the gang reaponsible threatened the local people such that they were afarid to come forward), or because they feel that the police don't take enough interest or are effective when they do.

A story
----
A year or so back, while I was away on business, my wife was awoken by a noise outside around 1.00 am. She assumed it was our older son who has a habit of coming around at all hours to do something to his car (we have a handy motion detector floodlight on our drive - useful illumination to work by). She went outside and called:'Andrew is that you?' The talking she had heard stopped for a moment and then she noticed that the car the other side of the hedge wasn't our son's, so she promptly went back inside and locked the door. The car stayed put and she saw people (men - as they were men's voices she had heard) moving about still outside. She was quite frightened - we are in an isolated location - so she called the police and explained her concern (also that our son's TVR was parked at our place - a likely target). Police reaction: there are no patrols in the area, but call again if they attempt to enter the property. Nice. Luckily they moved off of their own volition about ten minutes later (god knows how she would have been able to defend herself if they had tried to enter). No violence, but it demonstrates the knub of the problem.

The same thing has happened a couple more times when I have been around. The last one involved a man literally walking around our property talking on his phone at 2.30 am. Even when we got up and put lights on he still stayed in our drive. That time the police did come - three cars (it must have been a quiet night!), arriving about ten seconds after he had sped away from our house in his car. They'd actually passed him, as they were coming in the opposite direction, but they didn't manage to relate a lone motorist driving fast from the direction of our property with possibly being linked to our intruder, so he was never apprehended.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyclefrance (Post 323727)

A year or so back, while I was away on business, my wife was awoken by a noise outside around 1.00 am. She assumed it was our older son who has a habit of coming around at all hours to do something to his car (we have a handy motion detector floodlight on our drive - useful illumination to work by). She went outside and called:'Andrew is that you?' The talking she had heard stopped for a moment and then she noticed that the car the other side of the hedge wasn't our son's, so she promptly went back inside and locked the door. The car stayed put and she saw people (men - as they were men's voices she had heard) moving about still outside. She was quite frightened - we are in an isolated location - so she called the police and explained her concern (also that our son's TVR was parked at our place - a likely target). Police reaction: there are no patrols in the area, but call again if they attempt to enter the property. Nice. Luckily they moved off of their own volition about ten minutes later (god knows how she would have been able to defend herself if they had tried to enter). No violence, but it demonstrates the knub of the problem.

The same thing has happened a couple more times when I have been around. The last one involved a man literally walking around our property talking on his phone at 2.30 am. Even when we got up and put lights on he still stayed in our drive. That time the police did come - three cars (it must have been a quiet night!), arriving about ten seconds after he had sped away from our house in his car. They'd actually passed him, as they were coming in the opposite direction, but they didn't manage to relate a lone motorist driving fast from the direction of our property with possibly being linked to our intruder, so he was never apprehended.

I have a solution that my Dad taught me for taking care of obnoxious camp neighbors. It involves an old-school hockey/goalie mask and a chain-saw; let your imagination fill in the blanks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyclefrance (Post 323727)

Cf, over here, "firearms offences" are not crimes committed with a firearm but crimes resulting in having or carrying a firearm. I'm wondering if it means the same thing there.

If that's the case, it could explain why the BCS is going down while the police, since handguns are pretty much outlawed, could be arresting more people for possession thus showing a sharp increase in total crimes? :confused:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Undertoad (Post 323856)

Good lord.

Girls chant ‘kill him’ as gang chases schoolboy then stabs him to death

Eddie Polec. This is not a new story, unfortunately. Out of control mobs, large and small, pitchforks and torches, ropes and hoods, sticks and stones, go back as far as recorded history.:(