The biggest mistakes the British left made....

[TruXta]

The state set an example of not executing people and the murder rate went up. The state then set the example of not physically punishing people in schools; schools are now by all accounts more unruly, violent places, and where, in the poorest areas in particular, it is increasingly difficult to learn.

Evidence? Every study out there finds no evidence for a clear relationship between severity of punishment (as in length of sentence or for that matter capital punishment) and levels of crime. Yet you persist in spouting lies.

 

[LLETSA]

I don't really understand the "tough on criminals"="rightwing" automatically.

These day, when being socially right-wing is a minority taste and economically right-wing highly popular, you arejust as likely to find 'soft' views on crime among Tory voters as among those to the left of them.

 

[Blagsta]

At the heart of this lies the fundamental attribution error, which states simply that when we ourselves and people in a group we identify or sympathise with do something bad, we're much more likely to focus on situational factors that drove us to make a bad choice. Vice versa for people we don't like making bad choices, we tend to see them as coming from inner mental dispositions (bad attitudes, bad morals, bad knowledge).

It's a false opposition though. Attitudes, morals, knowledge etc are situational and situation is influenced by attitudes, morals, knowledge.

 

[Blagsta]

Evidence? Every study out there finds no evidence for a clear relationship between severity of punishment (as in length of sentence or for that matter capital punishment) and levels of crime. Yet you persist in spouting lies.

Jesus, is LLETSA arguing for corporal punishment?

 

[ericjarvis]

That isn't a right-wing view but one I'd wager most people, rightly or wrongly (and actually unproblematically) subscribe to in most societies. Most people in this society are not right-wing.

So tell us then, how do you derive policies to reduce crime starting from the point of view of the victims of crime? Because I don't see how you can. You can derive policies to make the victims of crime feel better, but as crime isn't caused by victims you won't be doing anything at all to reduce crime.

Now you may have the point of view that reducing crime is not important compared to making victims of crime feel better. If so then please state that openly. Personally I consider the most important thing I've learned as a victim of crime and from other victims of crime, is that the world would be a better place if there was less crime for us to be victims of.

 

[LLETSA]

Evidence? Every study out there finds no evidence for a clear relationship between severity of punishment (as in length of sentence or for that matter capital punishment) and levels of crime. Yet you persist in spouting lies.

I'm not going looking for statistics while I'm at work.

Nor am I lying, although I'll give it you that I might be repeating conventional wisdom. Does anybody else have the statistics for the murder rate in the UK befoe and after the abolition of hanging?

 

[_angel_]

Usually because it is an attempt, consciously or unconsciously, to deflect attention away from underlying social problems. Crime is committed by bad people and bad people need to be punished.

And where do the bad people come from? Will treating them in a 'tough' manner make them less bad? Usually people who want to be 'tough on criminals' don't get that far in their thought to ask those kinds of questions, partly because they don't like the only answers that the evidence supports. Bad people come from bad places, normally. And treating them in a 'tough' manner will generally just make them worse, particularly if they are young.

Firstly everyone has just assumed that I am "tough on criminals", I wasn't even talking about what I think - context is everything - there are some very dangerous people who shouldn't be out on the streets, but then there's plenty of better ways than tackling some people other than locking them up. Yes, some people have a bad start in life, but not every single crime committed will be as a result of upbringing either.
What I'm saying is there is nothing inherently right wing about the position of being "tough" on crime, plenty of old style Labour supporters would feel the same.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

So tell us then, how do you derive policies to reduce crime starting from the point of view of the victims of crime? Because I don't see how you can. You can derive policies to make the victims of crime feel better, but as crime isn't caused by victims you won't be doing anything at all to reduce crime.

Now you may have the point of view that reducing crime is not important compared to making victims of crime feel better. If so then please state that openly. Personally I consider the most important thing I've learned as a victim of crime and from other victims of crime, is that the world would be a better place if there was less crime for us to be victims of.

Yep. I agree with all of this. One of the most irritating things about this kind of debate is the assumption from certain sides that people arguing from my kind of point of view don't really know what it's like to be the victim of crime.

 

[TruXta]

I'm not going looking for statistics while I'm at work.

Nor am I lying, although I'll give it you that I might be repeating conventional wisdom. Does anybody else have the statistics for the murder rate in the UK befoe and after the abolition of hanging?

Those would be meaningless anyway, as the stats are collected in totally different ways and as such are non-comparable. Have a look at the US.

 

[TruXta]

It's a false opposition though. Attitudes, morals, knowledge etc are situational and situation is influenced by attitudes, morals, knowledge.

Of course it is, I'm just stating the fact that this is how a lot of people see the world.

 

[LLETSA]

Jesus, is LLETSA arguing for corporal punishment?

Yes and unashamedly so, if only because of growing up when it was commonplace and noticing that we hardly seem to have a better society due to its abolition.

A prize for the first one to accuse me of saying, 'Never did me any harm etc.'*


*A greasy turd.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

What I'm saying is there is nothing inherently right wing about the position of being "tough" on crime, plenty of old style Labour supporters would feel the same.

And what I'm saying is that there is. The 'tough on crime' position, as blagsta says, treats bad people as atomised individuals divorced from their social context. To look at people like that is inherently a right-wing point of view.

 

[LLETSA]

Those would be meaningless anyway, as the stats are collected in totally different ways and as such are non-comparable. Have a look at the US.

Very convenient. So has the murder rate in the UK gone down or up since the abolition of capital punishment?

Britain is not the US by the way.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yes and unashamedly so, if only because of growing up when it was commonplace and noticing that we hardly seem to have a better society due to its abolition.

A prize for the first one to accuse me of saying, 'Never did me any harm etc.'*


*A greasy turd.

Wtf is this 'things were better in the old days' bollocks. No they bloody weren't. Again, fact-free bollocks.

 

[LLETSA]

And what I'm saying is that there is. The 'tough on crime' position, as blagsta says, treats bad people as atomised individuals divorced from their social context. To look at people like that is inherently a right-wing point of view.

Not necessarily. Where's the contradiction between looking at the reasons why crime occurs and adequately punishing criminals?

 

[LLETSA]

Wtf is this 'things were better in the old days' bollocks. No they bloody weren't. Again, fact-free bollocks.

I never said anything was better in the old days. I said that it would be difficult to argue that today's society is better in most respects than the one we had when I was growing up.

 

[past caring]

But the question here, surely, at least the one asked in the OP (and it's the most pertinent one, I think) isn't "what causes crime?". The question is why the left has been so utterly unable to convince its own constituency of its answer to that question - why the left is so utterly irrelevant so far as the majority of working class people are concerned. It cannot be, surely, as eric seems to hint, that it's a matter of pearls amongst swine?

 

[Blagsta]

But the question here, surely, at least the one asked in the OP (and it's the most pertinent one, I think) isn't "what causes crime?". The question is why the left has been so utterly unable to convince its own constituency of its answer to that question - why the left is so utterly irrelevant so far as the majority of working class people are concerned. It cannot be, surely, as eric seems to hint, that it's a matter of pearls amongst swine?

I think there's many reasons why the left is not the force it once was. End of big industry being the main one.

 

[LLETSA]

Ah, so structural explanations work fine to explain relative levels of wealth, but has no bearing on how crime originates? Riiiight. That's that sorted. And FWIW, no, the left hasn't spent most of it's modern history trying to educate the workers about the virtues of rehabilitation. If you look at history Labour has always supported traditional penal responses crime (i.e. prison sentence).

You can have all the structural explanations you want, but it does nothing to alter the fact that most poorer people manage to get through life without beating somebody to death, maiming them or burgling their house, and rightly have no sympathy for those who do.

I don't think people are including Labour in what the discussion is terming the left.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Very convenient. So has the murder rate in the UK gone down or up since the abolition of capital punishment?

Britain is not the US by the way.

That is the wrong question. 'Did the abolition of capital punishment in the UK cause the murder rate to increase' is the right question. And to answer it, you need to make comparative studies with the scores of other countries that have also abolished capital punishment. The answer after that kind of analysis is pretty clear – there is no evidence that abolition leads to an increase in the murder rate (nor that it leads to a decrease – have a look at the figures for yourself, it appears to make no difference either way). It is very likely that the increase in the murder rate following abolition in the UK is due entirely to other factors.

Could you at least try to argue from an intelligent position?

 

[kyser_soze]

Here're a couple of decentish BBC articles on this subject:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/12/the_history_of_homicide.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/12/teen_homicide.html

Some useful links in the articles...

 

[LLETSA]

Indeed, what "crime" means also has to be analysed. Not all crime is the same.

Of course, arguing about attachment and brain development to someone who has just been burgled would be insulting. However, these arguments, that actually, social conditions affect psychology and the ability of people to think about their actions or take responsibilty for them, do need to be articulated in wider debate.

Such explanations have been on the increase for decades. They have done little or nothing to alter the public's attitude that criminals ought to be (as they, the potential and actual victims of crime see it) adequately punished.

 

[_angel_]

Very convenient. So has the murder rate in the UK gone down or up since the abolition of capital punishment?

Britain is not the US by the way.

Do you really trust the govt to get it right in cases of capital punishment tho? I don't.
most teachers dont want corporal punishment, just to be able to defend themselves should they need to

 

[TruXta]

Very convenient. So has the murder rate in the UK gone down or up since the abolition of capital punishment?

Britain is not the US by the way.

It's probably gone up, but that proves fuck all. Correlation, is it causation? The fuck it is. The comparison with the US is there because it's one of the few places where you can look at differential effects across not too dissimilar states.

 

[LLETSA]

Indeed, it's a liberal argument at heart, dependent on atomised individuals with no social context.

There is a social context, but the fact remains that if you smash a bottle over somebody's head or snatch an old lady's handbag, you have made a bad personal choice and should be suitably punished for it.

 

[_angel_]

i'm sure the murder rate was higher in victorian times and before, than it is now, detection is the deterrent i think not the punishment

 

[TruXta]

You can have all the structural explanations you want, but it does nothing to alter the fact that most poorer people manage to get through life without beating somebody to death, maiming them or burgling their house, and rightly have no sympathy for those who do.

I don't think people are including Labour in what the discussion is terming the left.

Ah, so it is bad people then who are to blame. Nothing to do with poverty or illness or abuse. Right, gotcha, glad we got that sorted out.

 

[ericjarvis]

The state set an example of not executing people and the murder rate went up. The state then set the example of not physically punishing people in schools; schools are now by all accounts more unruly, violent places, and where, in the poorest areas in particular, it is increasingly difficult to learn.

Really. Having gone to the local comprehensive in a poor rural area, all I can say is that there are no more knives around in schools in Brixton as there were when I was a schoolkid in North Lincolnshire. There doesn't appear to be any more violence in and around schools, particularly where younger children are concerned. Above all exam results are far better, and this clearly seems to be because kids have managed to learn more.

I realise that's a rarely heard view, but that's largely because I came out of a crap education with a modicum of articulacy and literacy so I can compare crap schools with crap schools as opposed to the usual comparison between a good school then and a crap school now. As for violence, I was beaten up on a weekly basis in my first year at comprehensive, basically until I got angry and put one of my assailants in hospital with serious head injuries. I had knives pulled on me several times, and though I was never actually attacked with one, several of my schoolmates were. However it was seen as the normal level of "horseplay" most of the time, and now and again as bullying gone slightly too far. So it wasn't all over the papers.

What I learned from getting the cane was that when sadistic morons are in charge you don't have to do anything wrong to get punished. What many of my schoolmates seemed to learn was that when somebody does something you don't approve of you must physically assault them.

As for comparing murder rates with or without capital punishment, as anyone with even a basic understanding of the scientific method will be able to tell you, it means nothing unless you have a comparison that can exclude other variables. What you actually need to compare is something like the changes in murder rates in US states compared to the national average over periods where capital punishment has been enacted or repealed in that state. I don't have time to go through that right now, but it's a very easy set of stats to sort out. Go do it for yourself.

 

[kyser_soze]

According to those BBC articles, the murder rate in the UK (and across Europe) has followed a curve, falling toward the 1950s/60s, then on an upswing since then to settling on a stable, vaguely downward trand over the last 2 decades. However, as they point out, comparing homicide stats is really, really diffilcult - even in the same country,

 

[ericjarvis]

i'm sure the murder rate was higher in victorian times and before, than it is now, detection is the deterrent i think not the punishment

Actually it was round about the same and maybe a little lower. However the problem with that is that the definitions of homicide in the UK have changed plus there are far fewer unrecorded murders these days.