Our Increasingly Violent Society
It seems that rarely a day goes by without another senseless and preventable murder taking place in Britain.
Yesterday, a man died in a London hospital a week after being stabbed and punched by two youths he confronted over throwing litter through his car window. At the weekend, Garry Newlove, died of injuries sustained when he approached a gang of teenagers who were damaging property in the road outside his house.
Sadly, it would seem that these attacks are becoming far more frequent and in certain areas almost common place. This is especially true of the big cities such as London, Nottingham, Manchester and Birmingham.
It is arguable that the increase in violence could be perceptive; that because the media now reports on these cases more widely and regularly than in the past, then people fear a threat which is, in reality, not actually increasing. However, I do not accept that to be true. Independent crime surveys continue to show a substantial increase in violent crime, with even the Government’s own manipulated figures showing a worryingly rapid rise.
It is very clear that we now live in a society where the majority of people are law-abiding while a minority are anything but and have nothing to fear from the law. Confidence in our police force (or as it now is; ‘service’) is at an all time low. Far from being the last of the great unreformed British institutions, the Police have been steadily and quietly bureaucratised and politicised by successive governments for decades. What’s more, as a nation we cannot seem to decide on a solution to this growing problem. The Labour Government has been content to fashion headline grabbing initiatives such as Anti-Social Behavioural Orders and new policing initiatives for the past ten years to little effect.
The ITV evening news yesterday featured one male citizen journalist in the News Uploaded section calling for night time curfews for groups of teenagers, and an increase in police dispersal powers. This just would not have any affect. The children and youths who currently commit crimes at night would just break the curfews anyway, so it would be another unnecessary law with no purpose but to give the appearance of activity while yet further weighing down the statute books – which is why we’ll probably see Labour implement it in a few years.
Most of the solutions put forward today attempt to tackle the symptoms rather than the root cause of low-level and violent crime in Britain. These real problems such as the breakdown of the family unit, lack of discipline in schools and in some areas an increasingly secular and divided society; have been brewing for many years now. In fact I would probably guess more likely decades. They are problems that have permeated our society and consequently there are unlikely to be any quick fix solutions. It will probably take a similar period of time to correct the damage as it did to create.
Unfortunately though, in a country where the government and the ruling classes consider crime a social disease caused by relative poverty, and are totally unaffected by it themselves, then there are bleak prospects for any future improvement.
