Our obsession with crime is crushing our freedoms

Our obsession with crime is crushing our freedoms
Henry Porter
The Observer, Sunday September 7 2008

...The speed with which our dear, familiar democracy is vanishing under the weight of totalitarian pettiness is appalling and one wonders when this easygoing nation will rise against the trends set so blithely by that authoritarian basket case Tony Blair and continued by mediocrities such as Hazel Blears and Jacqui Smith.

...The mystery in all this is: where are the police? Since Labour came to power, the police have basked in the sun, though, like farmers, they always complain about their lot. The facts are these. Between 1997 and 2007, spending on law and order rose by a half a percentage point to 2.5 per cent of GDP. Last year, the criminal justice system received £22.7bn, about £15.13bn of which went to the police. In the past decade, the police have received a budget increase of 21 percent and the police workforce rose by 50,000, which includes an extra 15,000 officers.

...To put these figures in perspective, we spend more on law and order than any other OECD country including the United States, France, Germany and Spain. It is fair to say that Britain is in the grip of law and order obsession, yet we seem incapable of putting police officers on the beat to patrol our streets, investigate crimes and keep order with an eye to proportionate and sensible use of their powers...Despite crime figures going down, we continue to spend more and lock up proportionately more people than any other free country.

...We have forgotten all our empirical skills when it comes to law and policing. Instead of assessing what the problems are - the fact that prisons do not reform offenders, that crime is caused by complex social issues as much as by individual moral failure, that police officers at their desks or in squad cars do not deter crime as well as those on the beat - we have allowed a blind and vengeful regime to skew our sense of reason and what is right for a liberal democracy.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, also came out with an excellent report last week, which attacked the creation by Labour of 3,600 new offences - nearly one for each day in power - and pointed out that England and Wales had experienced an 11 per cent drop in crime at the same time as an incredible 45 per cent increase in the prison rate. Last week, the prison population reached 83,000. The conclusion is clear: we are sending too many of the wrong people to prison and for too long.

Mockmaster wrote:I've always said and I will continue to maintain that the answer to the overcrowding of jails crisis is not crime deterrent or rehabilitation. No. The answer is:


Concentration Camps

Mockmaster wrote:I've always said and I will continue to maintain that the answer to the overcrowding of jails crisis is not crime deterrent or rehabilitation. No. The answer is:


Space Prisons

Octoroc wrote:EDIT: But yeah New Labour = Neo Nazis. Vote Conservative and let the GOOD TIMES ROLL (if you're rich and living in England).

Henke wrote:

Octoroc wrote:EDIT: But yeah New Labour = Neo Nazis. Vote Conservative and let the GOOD TIMES ROLL (if you're rich and living in England).

Fixed.

Anna Key, Anna Key, you're the only girl for me.

Drunken_Master wrote:Right about now NWA court is in full effect.
Judge Dre presiding in the case of NWA versus the police department.
Prosecuting attourneys are MC Ren Ice Cube and Eazy muthafuckin E.
Order order order. Ice Cube take the muthafuckin stand.
Do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth
and nothin but the truth so help your black ass?

Why don't you tell everybody what the **** you gotta say?

**** tha police
Comin straight from the underground
Young ***** got it bad cuz I'm brown
And not the other color so police think
They have the authority to kill a minority

**** that ****, cuz I ain't tha one
For a punk muthafucka with a badge and a gun
To be beatin on, and throwin in jail
We could go toe to toe in the middle of a cell

****** with me cuz I'm a teenager
With a little bit of gold and a pager
Searchin my car, lookin for the product
Thinkin every ***** is sellin narcotics

You'd rather see me in the pen
Then me and Lorenzo rollin in the Benzo
Beat tha police outta shape
And when I'm finished, bring the yellow tape
To tape off the scene of the slaughter
Still can't swallow bread and water

I don't know if they fags or what
Search a ***** down and grabbin his nuts
And on the other hand, without a gun they can't get none
But don't let it be a black and a white one
Cuz they slam ya down to the street top
Black police showin out for the white cop

Ice Cube will swarm
On any muthafucka in a blue uniform
Just cuz I'm from the CPT, punk police are afraid of me
A young ***** on a warpath
And when I'm finished, it's gonna be a bloodbath
Of cops, dyin in LA
Yo Dre, I got somethin to say

**** the police (4X)

Commander Jameson wrote:

Drunken_Master wrote:Right about now NWA court is in full effect.
Judge Dre presiding in the case of NWA versus the police department.
Prosecuting attourneys are MC Ren Ice Cube and Eazy muthafuckin E.
Order order order. Ice Cube take the muthafuckin stand.
Do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth
and nothin but the truth so help your black ass?

Why don't you tell everybody what the **** you gotta say?

**** tha police
Comin straight from the underground
Young ***** got it bad cuz I'm brown
And not the other color so police think
They have the authority to kill a minority

**** that ****, cuz I ain't tha one
For a punk muthafucka with a badge and a gun
To be beatin on, and throwin in jail
We could go toe to toe in the middle of a cell

****** with me cuz I'm a teenager
With a little bit of gold and a pager
Searchin my car, lookin for the product
Thinkin every ***** is sellin narcotics

You'd rather see me in the pen
Then me and Lorenzo rollin in the Benzo
Beat tha police outta shape
And when I'm finished, bring the yellow tape
To tape off the scene of the slaughter
Still can't swallow bread and water

I don't know if they fags or what
Search a ***** down and grabbin his nuts
And on the other hand, without a gun they can't get none
But don't let it be a black and a white one
Cuz they slam ya down to the street top
Black police showin out for the white cop

Ice Cube will swarm
On any muthafucka in a blue uniform
Just cuz I'm from the CPT, punk police are afraid of me
A young ***** on a warpath
And when I'm finished, it's gonna be a bloodbath
Of cops, dyin in LA
Yo Dre, I got somethin to say

**** the police (4X)

I'm listening to that right now!

Drunken_Master wrote:

Commander Jameson wrote:

Drunken_Master wrote:Right about now NWA court is in full effect.
Judge Dre presiding in the case of NWA versus the police department.
Prosecuting attourneys are MC Ren Ice Cube and Eazy muthafuckin E.
Order order order. Ice Cube take the muthafuckin stand.
Do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth
and nothin but the truth so help your black ass?

Why don't you tell everybody what the **** you gotta say?

**** tha police
Comin straight from the underground
Young ***** got it bad cuz I'm brown
And not the other color so police think
They have the authority to kill a minority

**** that ****, cuz I ain't tha one
For a punk muthafucka with a badge and a gun
To be beatin on, and throwin in jail
We could go toe to toe in the middle of a cell

****** with me cuz I'm a teenager
With a little bit of gold and a pager
Searchin my car, lookin for the product
Thinkin every ***** is sellin narcotics

You'd rather see me in the pen
Then me and Lorenzo rollin in the Benzo
Beat tha police outta shape
And when I'm finished, bring the yellow tape
To tape off the scene of the slaughter
Still can't swallow bread and water

I don't know if they fags or what
Search a ***** down and grabbin his nuts
And on the other hand, without a gun they can't get none
But don't let it be a black and a white one
Cuz they slam ya down to the street top
Black police showin out for the white cop

Ice Cube will swarm
On any muthafucka in a blue uniform
Just cuz I'm from the CPT, punk police are afraid of me
A young ***** on a warpath
And when I'm finished, it's gonna be a bloodbath
Of cops, dyin in LA
Yo Dre, I got somethin to say

**** the police (4X)

I'm listening to that right now!

My *****.

Commander Jameson wrote:
NWA Greatest Hits - Track 5, mo'fo.

Brerlappins little hat wrote:

Drunken_Master wrote:

Commander Jameson wrote:
NWA Greatest Hits - Track 5, mo'fo.

We ought to roll man. I got a 5.0, I'll put the rag top down so my hair can blow. The girlies will be on standby, waiting just to say hi.

Did you stop?

Brerlappins little hat wrote:

Mockmaster wrote:I've always said and I will continue to maintain that the answer to the overcrowding of jails crisis is not crime deterrent or rehabilitation. No. The answer is:


Space Prisons

But would the prisoners be held in palce by magnetic boots? Ill only get onboard this idea if magnets are involved

Brerlappins little hat wrote:

Mockmaster wrote:

Brerlappins little hat wrote:

Mockmaster wrote:I've always said and I will continue to maintain that the answer to the overcrowding of jails crisis is not crime deterrent or rehabilitation. No. The answer is:


Space Prisons

But would the prisoners be held in palce by magnetic boots? Ill only get onboard this idea if magnets are involved

Yes man. Rest assured they'd have magnetic boots just like in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Then consider me onboard

Also, speaking of magnets, has anyone else ever wondered why in terminators 1, 2 & 3, and also in the robocop movies, why the heroes/bad guys didnt think to just get one of those big junk yard cranes with a magnet attached to it, and just pick up the terminator/robocop, and leave him there? Seriously, it would work so easily.

Brerlappins little hat wrote:I dunno, robocop 2 was so shithouse i only saw it once. Now Robocop, THERES a film.

Cal wrote:Time to lock this baby, up, Mods. As much as I'm a hip-hop fan (really) and enjoy any discussion of Star Trek anti-grav boots, even I'd hoped for a rather better level of 'discussion'... Never mind.