The biggest mistakes the British left made....

[ericjarvis]

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?

The big problem is that the Labour Party ceased to be part of the left, and the remainder of the factions have been more concerned about being in control of any mainstream left alliance than in any such alliance succeeding.

 

[_angel_]

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.

I think the fact people wouldn't even have known about it in a lot of cases, would have meant it was easier to get away with. I don't get the impression that Victorian London was a safer place than today's London, for example though.

eta thru looking at the Leeds Mercury from about 100 years ago, there were an awful lot of record of child abuse/ murder/ drunken killings, now obviously this was just the beginning of them starting to investigate these things and report them better. It was quite a shock to compare to the YEP of today.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

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,

I can't be arsed to do it again, but on a CP thread a while ago, I dug out all the abolition dates of various countries and compared them with trends in murder rates. There was absolutely no correlation. All the evidence suggests that capital punishment neither encourages nor prevents murder.

 

[LLETSA]

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

I'm not pro-corporal punishment-I was simply making an observation that (unless somebody can prove me wrong, which I am prepared to concede I might be) that the murder rate seems to have risen since capital punishment was abolished. I don't get too animated over the issues of capital and corporal punishment anyway, as there is simply no chance of either being reintroduced. Unless, of course, there is a revolution of either the left of the right, in which case we'll get more executions and physical beatings than we can cope with, of both the guilty and innocent, just as in all revolutions which are not organised by the likes of George Soros and named after a colour or a flower.


Edited to add: I meant to say that I'm not pro-capital punishment.

 

[kyser_soze]

I wasn't trying to say it was or wasn't. In fact I was previously pretty certain that the presence of capital punishment is ineffective as a deterrent to crime.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

ffs, try reading the replies. @ llletsa

 

[TruXta]

I'm not pro-corporal punishment-I was simply making an observation that (unless somebody can prove me wrong, which I am prepared to concede I might be) that the murder rate seems to have risen since capital punishment was abolished. I don't get too animated over the issues of capital and corporal punishment anyway, as there is simply no chance of either being reintroduced. Unless, of course, there is a revolution of either the left of the right, in which case we'll get more executions and physical beatings than we can cope with, of both the guilty and innocent, just as in all revolutions which are not organised by the likes of George Soros and named after a colour or a flower.

No, you made it quite clear that you believe that the abolition of the death penalty caused murder rates to soar.

 

[ericjarvis]

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.

Actually that's not really relevant either.

The relevant statistics are the ratio of the murder rate in a specific US state compared to the national average before and after the abolition or institution of capital punishment. That gives a comparison with a minimum of other factors involved.

 

[LLETSA]

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?

And could you try to argue from a non-mealy mouthed one?

So did the murder rate rise in this countryafter the abolition of capital punishment or not? That was the question.

 

[TruXta]

And could you try to argue from a non-mealy mouthed one?

So did the murder rate rise in this countryafter the abolition of capital punishment or not? That was the wquestion.

And the answer is yes it most likely did. Which proves the square root of fuck all. Did the murder rate rise as the WV Beetle became more popular? Why yes it did! Ergo, ownership of Beetles cause homicide, QED.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

And could you try to argue from a non-mealy mouthed one?

So did the murder rate rise in this countryafter the abolition of capital punishment or not? That was the question.

Yes it did, a bit. And you are drawing entirely unwarranted conclusions from that fact, as I and others are trying to explain to you.

I blame the pill, personally.

 

[TruXta]

Actually that's not really relevant either.

The relevant statistics are the ratio of the murder rate in a specific US state compared to the national average before and after the abolition or institution of capital punishment. That gives a comparison with a minimum of other factors involved.

Fair enough.

 

[past caring]

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

You see, this, I think is where we part company.

We agree that the failure of the left is its dismissal of working class concerns, its inability to have anything other than its explanation for crime heard and its consequent appearance as an apologist for criminals. But listening to working class concerns and coming up with practical solutions to those concerns does not equate to agreeing with any old reactionary solution presented in response. Policies should be about what works, not simply what people want.

I would argue that a demand for punishment is not necessarily a priority amongst working class communities that suffer high crime levels and that a higher priority might well be for crime reduction, particularly where that manifests itself in the near term and quite visibly. So yes, it is Blagsta's better housing and better drug treatment - but it's also the things that left have never bothered with (or has seen as beneath them) - better street lighting, resident caretakers on estates, a proper concierge system, better youth facilities etc. Practical things that can be campaigned for in the here and now which make a difference but which the traditional left does not dirty its hands.

My own view (not the IWCA one, though there's a few would agree) is that we go for a different drugs policy - not legalisation as such, but heroin/crack/meth whatever, freely available to addicts via their GP/drugs walk-in centre. And a huge, parallel, investment in treatment programmes for those that want to get clear. This is no "drugs liberalisation" policy for the sake of liberalisation but an attempt to break the connection between drug use and crime - the fact that there would no longer be any need to whore or rob etc to pay for a habit would have a marked reduction on crime levels. There would, no doubt, be some who refused to take the opportunity and who would continue to prey on the community - but they would, I think, then become a much smaller minority and one which the community could more readily deal with.

 

[LLETSA]

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.

US society is vastly more violent than any other Western society, and vastly different in many other respects than any country in Europe.

So it has gone up then, the murder rate?

 

[Blagsta]

You see, this, I think is where we part company.

We agree that the failure of the left is its dismissal of working class concerns, its inability to have anything other than its explanation for crime heard and its consequent appearance as an apologist for criminals. But listening to working class concerns and coming up with practical solutions to those concerns does not equate to agreeing with any old reactionary solution presented in response. Policies should be about what works, not simply what people want.

I would argue that a demand for punishment is not necessarily a priority amongst working class communities that suffer high crime levels and that a higher priority might well be for crime reduction, particularly where that manifests itself in the near term and quite visibly. So yes, it is Blagsta's better housing and better drug treatment - but it's also the things that left have never bothered with (or has seen as beneath them) - better street lighting, resident caretakers on estates, a proper concierge system, better youth facilities etc. Practical things that can be campaigned for in the here and now which make a difference but which the traditional left does not dirty its hands.

My own view (not the IWCA one, though there's a few would agree) is that we go for a different drugs policy - not legalisation as such, but heroin/crack/meth whatever, freely available to addicts via their GP/drugs walk-in centre. And a huge, parallel, investment in treatment programmes for those that want to get clear. This is no "drugs liberalisation" policy for the sake of liberalisation but an attempt to break the connection between drug use and crime - the fact that there would no longer be any need to whore or rob etc to pay for a habit would have a marked reduction on crime levels. There would, no doubt, be some who refused to take the opportunity and who would continue to prey on the community - but they would, I think, then become a much smaller minority and one which the community could more readily deal with.

amen

 

[littlebabyjesus]

So it has gone up then, the murder rate?

I give up. You really do appear to be this stupid.

 

[TruXta]

US society is vastly more violent than any other Western society, and vastly different in many other respects than any country in Europe.

So it has gone up then, the murder rate?

How many times do you need to see the answer? Yes, it's up compared to the 60s, but it's still lower than it was in the early 1800s, when people were hanged en mass for pretty fucking petty crimes. How do you explain that one then, without looking at structural factors? Were they simply very very naughty in those days?

 

[frogwoman]

You see, this, I think is where we part company.

We agree that the failure of the left is its dismissal of working class concerns, its inability to have anything other than its explanation for crime heard and its consequent appearance as an apologist for criminals. But listening to working class concerns and coming up with practical solutions to those concerns does not equate to agreeing with any old reactionary solution presented in response. Policies should be about what works, not simply what people want.

I would argue that a demand for punishment is not necessarily a priority amongst working class communities that suffer high crime levels and that a higher priority might well be for crime reduction, particularly where that manifests itself in the near term and quite visibly. So yes, it is Blagsta's better housing and better drug treatment - but it's also the things that left have never bothered with (or has seen as beneath them) - better street lighting, resident caretakers on estates, a proper concierge system, better youth facilities etc. Practical things that can be campaigned for in the here and now which make a difference but which the traditional left does not dirty its hands.

My own view (not the IWCA one, though there's a few would agree) is that we go for a different drugs policy - not legalisation as such, but heroin/crack/meth whatever, freely available to addicts via their GP/drugs walk-in centre. And a huge, parallel, investment in treatment programmes for those that want to get clear. This is no "drugs liberalisation" policy for the sake of liberalisation but an attempt to break the connection between drug use and crime - the fact that there would no longer be any need to whore or rob etc to pay for a habit would have a marked reduction on crime levels. There would, no doubt, be some who refused to take the opportunity and who would continue to prey on the community - but they would, I think, then become a much smaller minority and one which the community could more readily deal with.

Good post PC.

 

[kyser_soze]

I've agreed with everything past caring has posted on this thread so far, and that last post is like a cherry on a cake.

 

[TruXta]

Yeah, that's a good post pc. Now LLETSA, before you slink away, care to answer how exactly you know that the abolition of the death penalty caused murder rates to increase?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I agree with pc too. Good post.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

I vote PC for PM, anyone second him?

 

[past caring]

I vote PC for PM, anyone second him?

He's a bit of a cunt, tbh.

 

[Streathamite]

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

I'd add to that "tearing itself apart in public for a near-whole decade".
And "forsaking class politics for the chimera of identity politics"

 

[Streathamite]

You see, this, I think is where we part company.

We agree that the failure of the left is its dismissal of working class concerns, its inability to have anything other than its explanation for crime heard and its consequent appearance as an apologist for criminals. But listening to working class concerns and coming up with practical solutions to those concerns does not equate to agreeing with any old reactionary solution presented in response. Policies should be about what works, not simply what people want.

I would argue that a demand for punishment is not necessarily a priority amongst working class communities that suffer high crime levels and that a higher priority might well be for crime reduction, particularly where that manifests itself in the near term and quite visibly. So yes, it is Blagsta's better housing and better drug treatment - but it's also the things that left have never bothered with (or has seen as beneath them) - better street lighting, resident caretakers on estates, a proper concierge system, better youth facilities etc. Practical things that can be campaigned for in the here and now which make a difference but which the traditional left does not dirty its hands.

My own view (not the IWCA one, though there's a few would agree) is that we go for a different drugs policy - not legalisation as such, but heroin/crack/meth whatever, freely available to addicts via their GP/drugs walk-in centre. And a huge, parallel, investment in treatment programmes for those that want to get clear. This is no "drugs liberalisation" policy for the sake of liberalisation but an attempt to break the connection between drug use and crime - the fact that there would no longer be any need to whore or rob etc to pay for a habit would have a marked reduction on crime levels. There would, no doubt, be some who refused to take the opportunity and who would continue to prey on the community - but they would, I think, then become a much smaller minority and one which the community could more readily deal with.

seconded,provided you add cannabis and ecstasy decriminalisation

 

[LLETSA]

I give up. You really do appear to be this stupid.

I can't help it if you want to stick your fingers in your ears and go ner, ner, ner. And you don't strike me as particularly intelligent yourself. Just another ten-a-penny patronising liberal.

 

[past caring]

seconded,provided you add cannabis and ecstasy decriminalisation

Aye, it's a load of old shit, otherwise, isn't it? God save us from the hordes of eed-up youth, mugging old dears to finance their weekends of partying.

 

[Red Cat]

I'd add to that "tearing itself apart in public for a near-whole decade".
And "forsaking class politics for the chimera of identity politics"

Surely that's related to the end of big industry.

 

[ViolentPanda]

The problem is that people often don't want restorative justice...

To be fair, this id not something we know, but something that can only be assumed

...they want retributive justice, which is a model most European countries have rightly abandoned long ago.

Or at least have criminal justice systems that rely on inquisitorial systems, where retribution over and above punishment for crime(s) committed isn't possible.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I can't help it if you want to stick your fingers in your ears and go ner, ner, ner. And you don't strike me as particularly intelligent yourself. Just another ten-a-penny patronising liberal.

I gave you a considered response, which you called 'mealy mouthed'. Now I really shouldn't rise to it, but you're always the one who starts with the insults, normally after missing the point of a well-reasoned response to one of your inanities.