Licensed police harassement
New Labour lost an elextion, so you know what that means. Yep, it's time for another round of halfbaked, ill-thought new measures and proposals designed to show how tough New Labour is on crime. Or rather, how tough New Labour is on young people. There must be something in the water at the home office, to judge by the authoritarian crackpot ideas succesive home secretaries came up with. Jacqui Smith is te latest victim of the Whitehall braineater, suggesting the police should make the life of "persistent offenders" a living hell by harassing them on a daily basis. Note that these are convicted people, just people who the police believes are bad:
Police should be harassing badly behaved youths by openly filming them and hounding them at home to make their lives as uncomfortable as possible, the home secretary will say today. The crime initiative is part of a government strategy to win back voters by proposing more radical approaches to tackling deep seated problems.
In a speech in London the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, will acknowledge that the number of antisocial behaviour orders being issued is falling, but will argue that there has been a shift to the use of parental orders instead.
As part of the crackdown on bad behaviour, she will urge police forces across the country to follow the example of Essex police, who have mounted four-day "frame and shame" operations by filming and repeatedly stopping identified persistent offenders on problem estates.
The programme in Essex has been successful, even though it may raise human rights issues about such tough tactics, especially if those harassed by the police have not been found guilty of any criminal offence.
Smith will say: "There is no let-up in tackling antisocial behaviour. We know that getting in early to stop troublemakers works, but I want stronger action to deal with persistent offenders. I want police and local agencies to focus on them by giving them a taste of their own medicine: daily visits, repeated warnings and relentless filming of offenders to create an environment where there is nowhere to hide.
"There can be no excuse for inaction while people still fear for the safety of the streets and estates where they live. We will do more to protect them. We all need to sharpen our resolve to tackle both the symptoms and the causes of antisocial behaviour."
What's worrying me is not just that this is a supposedly serious proposal, but that it is taken as such by the media and political commentators. Yes, it's criticised, but it's criticised on whether or not it would be effective, or on abstract grounds of human rights infringement, rather than that it's a bloody stupid idea. The police isn't meant to harass people, it's there to protect the public and solve crimes and this isn't doing either. But it sells well, if not to the voters, at least to the tabloids.
In a wider context this is all part of the great war on youth the UK seems to have engaged in this past decade or so. Current highlights include this and yesterday's reclassification of cannabis as a class B drug recriminalising users. Sometimes I wonder whether the state of hysteria surrounding teenagers is due to the ageing baby boomer population, or because so many more teenagers these days are well, black or asian...
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police harassement
War on Youth,
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Posted by Martin Wisse Permalink End of post.
