Recipe to Reduce Crime

Simple recipe for improving Criminal Justice in the UK :

1. Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of policing. In practical terms, this means focusing on the three core functions of the police and ruthlessly eliminating any non-core activity. What are the core functions of the police ?

• Civilise the streets
• Reduce actual levels of real crime 
• Reduce number of deaths and serious injuries on the roads

And yes, this does mean that lots of eye-catching initiatives will have to be dropped. Sorry about that.

2. Improve the effectiveness of the CPS. I would suggest experimenting with giving one or two police forces the budget and letting them organise their own legal teams. If nothing else, this should make the CPS fear for its future and begin to pay attention.

3. Significantly increase our 'punishment capacity', including prison capacity. An overcrowded prison system feeds back into the entire criminal justice system, creating a vicious cycle in which criminal behaviour goes unpunished, leading to increased criminality, which further clogs up the capacity of all agencies to respond. We need to shift into a virtuous cycle, in which criminal behaviour is punished decisively, discouraging further criminal behaviour and leading to reductions in criminal behaviour.

Do it right and our prison population will begin to fall, because would-be criminals are getting the message. Do it wrong (as at present), and we have the barmy situation of having to let prisoners out early, en masse, simply to reduce the queue of criminals waiting to come in.

4. Sort out sentencing. Crimes of acquisition need to cost the criminal vastly more than he can 'earn' from crime. 'Cost' may be in time served, fines imposed and/or other penalties. It's a simple enough equation.

5. Strip the assets of any convicted criminal unless he can show legitimate (ie known to the Inland Revenue) sources of income.

6. Enforce the law on serving alcohol to people who are already intoxicated. Will reduce a large proportion of weekend violence and thereby free up personnel.

7. Stop negotiating with criminals. We have developed a 'plea bargaining' culture throughout our CJS. It's time to recognise that the purpose of the system is to impose decent standards on everybody – we should not be embarrassed about enforcing the law. Crucially, we need to change the relationship between those who would commit crimes and the rest of society - we have to make it more appealing for people to toe the line.

Can all of the above be achieved? Yes – easily. It's important to note, however, that proposals to bring in elected police commissioners will fail unless the incoming government tackles the whole criminal justice system as a system – fixing one element in isolation will be ineffective.

The Arithmetic of Crime Part 2 - Drugs

There is probably more well-intentioned nonsense spoken about drugs policy than any other topic save the selection of the England football squad. It's part of the British Condition (similar to the Human Condition but more complicated) to polarise any debate into two 'opposing' positions, regardless of how subtle or nuanced the matter actually is.

I'm not going to deal, in this post, with the legalisation question. That deserves its own post / book / lifetime to untangle.

What I'd like to address here is the arithmetic of drugs.

According to the Home Office, in 2006 the value of the illegal drugs trade was £5.3 billion, give or take a billion. Numbers on this scale make the so-called 'war on drugs' seem like a fool's errand : surely we're destined to lose, because such riches will always attract new players?

I think it would be wrong to despair. What we really need is a clear understanding of what 'success' might look like. Let me spell out a few success criteria, and then discuss the route we might take to achieve them :

1. It will be a good day when young people feel relaxed about declining drugs - when peer pressure no longer operates in favour of the pusher. We have gone through a sea change in public perception of drugs. Young people in particular regard drug-taking as normal, an everyday part of life. This might not be such an issue if the range of drugs wasn't as wide as it is - every few months we see a new drug, or a variant on an old one, hit the streets. The consequences are utterly unknown, yet young people cheerfully sign up to the latest fad.

2. We need to reach a point where dealers and potential dealers feel that the risks outweigh the reward, and move into other areas of work

3. We need a healthy slice of that £5.3 billion to make its way back into the legitimate economy

4. Existing addicts become ex-addicts at a faster rate than new addicts are formed, contracting the market

1. How do we re-attach stigma to drug use? Only by very visible conviction - young people need to see - particularly in clubs - that there is a very real risk of being arrested and prosecuted for buying illicit drugs. A bit tough on the sacrificial lambs who get arrested, but the purpose isn't really to change their behaviour so much as the behaviour of the next generation coming through. If you had seen a drugs bust at your local club, and somebody from your town ended up in the dock - somebody just like you - this might just give you the ability to say 'no thanks' when you're next offered drugs. It won't deter the already-keen drug users, but we do need to help young people to resist peer pressure.

2. The only way we can deter local dealers is by stripping the assets, quite ruthlessly, of every drug dealer at whatever level we can find. We already have the legal power to do this - it needs to be enforced perhaps 100 times as frequently as at present. The Asset Recovery Agency was set up to achieve this, but sadly cost £65 million to run and only ever retrieved £35 million from criminals. SOCA is now tasked with continuing the fight, but I don't think anybody's holding their breath. The problem, as usual, is in will. Massive organisations are hopelessly bureacratic and self-serving. Let's devolve the powers to local police teams and let them fight the drugs dealers on their own patches. Some will do a great job and some will fail, but across the UK we should be able to at least begin to change the arithmetic.

3. See 2.

4. I would like to see a legislative change with regard to drug users. For certain drugs - notably, not marijuana which I think is a special case - we should automatically force anybody failing a blood test to attend a 3 month treatment programme at a secure facility. A blood test should be legally enforceable in a range of situations where police have reasonable grounds - we need to make it easy for police to order a test. This would be immensely expensive, but would achieve three outcomes :

• 3 months when they're not stealing to fund their habit
• a chance that some will be helped by the treatment
• 3 months when their dealers are going without some income

We have to be careful that we don't inadvertently incentivise dealers to 'grow' new addicts to make up the shortfall in their income. If we have established a ruthless process of asset stripping we have a fighting chance of making local drug-dealing - the face to face deals at the end of the chain - unprofitable. If we can achieve this, then we have a real chance of contracting the entire drugs economy.

It is not inevitable that the number of problem drug users will increase. It is perfectly possible to bring this number down, year on year, along with the tsunami of crime which each addict is responsible for.

The Arithmetic of Crime Part 1 - Shoplifting

First, some basic arithmetic. Roughly 1 in 5 reported cases of shoplifting results in a detection - though reported thefts from shops may be just the tip of the iceberg. The average value of items stolen was £45 in 2009. So it would seem reasonable to assume that of the 21% of shoplifters who were caught, their fines would be at least 5 x £45 = £225. At this level of fine, we have done no more than 'break even', in the sense that the total value of goods stolen has been balanced by the total fines imposed. At this point, we haven't done anything more than ensure that 'crime doesn't pay'.

What's the reality? According to this article, in 2007 (most recent figures available) 44,747 of the 152,059 'successfully detected' shoplifting cases led to a caution. Yup. Just a caution. A further 45,146 cases resulted in a PND (penalty notice for disorder) of between £50 and £80 - but half of these were never paid! That leaves 62,166 who were dealt with in court - only 41% of the total. (Don't forget that this isn't 41% of all shoplifters, it's 41% of the 21% who were caught, or about 8% of all shoplifters).

What's the likelihood that the unlucky 41% will have been given a suitable penalty? I don't have these figures - yet - but I'm not holding my breath.

There's a really simple principle which we seem to have forgotten. Crime must not be allowed to pay. As long as we impose miniscule monetary penalties on thieves, in comparison to the gains they can make through crime, we will lose. When the penalties start matching the gains, we will begin to find the elusive tipping point. This isn't rocket science. It's basic arithmetic so simple that even a hedge fund manager could master it.

Preaching to the Converted

It doesn't give me any comfort to know that the Home Office spends roughly £5 Million p.a. on condescending ads telling us all to lock our doors.

"The forecast for Home Office spend for 2009-10 is as follows:

TV airtime £3,054,178

Radio airtime £799,405

Print (Newspapers & Magazines) £911,698

The activity that has been scheduled may still be subject to alteration and the total for each media may change. The figures quoted are net media costs and do not include production costs or fees. "

I'm particularly irritated by the radio campaign featuring an idiotic couple who make sure they've left all their doors and windows open. It's yet another attempt by the Home Office to encourage us all to prevent crime by turning our homes into Fort Knox.

Now, of course we should lock doors, keep valuables out of sight etc. It's common sense. But should the Home Office be spending our money to tell us this stuff? When did they last run an advertising campaign targeted at criminals? I'd quite like to hear genuine villains on the radio, bemoaning their lack of freedom. That would be worthwhile propaganda.

I have a suspicion that every poster, every advertisement telling us to be aware of crime actually makes crime more likely. Because none of us is an island - we all pick up cues from our environment. The more that we tell people that criminal activity is normal, and to be expected, the more we, well, normalise it.

Home Office, please stop spending our money on anti-crime advertising. £5 million would fund about 100 constables (At a cost per constable of £48,000 pa, including pension contributions).

Moans about the cost of police officers aside, 100 people catching criminals would surely be a better use of public funds than asinine adverts telling us to lock the door.

Do we have a problem with Car theft?

What does the Home Office think about vehicle crime? Here 's a reassuring quote :

"We've already had success in reducing vehicle crime - in recent years vehicle crime in the UK has been steadily falling. "

And another :

"Vehicle-related theft has fallen by 51 per cent since 1997, according to the authoritative British Crime Survey (BCS) 2005/06. The risk of having your vehicle stolen is very low – about once every 107 years.

In 2005 199,531 cars were stolen in England, Scotland and Wales. This is 38,394 fewer thefts than in 2004. "

These figures come from the 2006 Car Theft Index (most recent available). Good news, eh? Except that 199,531 cars stolen means 200,000(ish) households losing their second most valuable possession; 200,000 potentially dangerous drivers on our roads; 200,000 insurance claims. I'd say this was a remarkable level of criminality.

To put these figures another way, having your car stolen once every 107 years means that if you drive for 53 years, there's a 50/50 chance that your car will be stolen at some point. Or if you live in a street with 100 cars (say, 50 houses) the likelihood is that one car will be stolen from your street every year. Not such a rarity when you look at it like this.

So why are the figures falling? The same Car Theft Index provides a clue :

"Cars that were between 12 and 14 years old (registered between 1991 and 1993) faced the greatest risk of being stolen, with a theft rate of 22 cars per 1,000 registered.

Cars registered between 2003 and 2005 had the lowest rates of theft, with three stolen per 1,000 registered."

In other words, the annual reductions we're seeing might have little or nothing to do with policing effectiveness - it may simply be that newer cars are harder to nick. That's good news for the long term, but it speaks volumes about Home Office complacency.