The Cost Of Crime

This unfortunate comment by the Home Secretary about being too afraid to walk the streets of London at night resonates with something that struck me just after Christmas, when I read this.

Both items make me wonder why should the law-abiding have to pay the cost of crime, all the time.

We – it seems – have to be constantly ‘upgrading our security’: burglar alarms, window locks, security lighting and so forth on our homes; car alarms, immobilizers, removable – or theft-proof - satnav and car stereos in our cars. Then, if we do dare to walk the streets (unlike our glorious politicians), we are told to hide our valuables, do not use mobile phones and keep to the well-lit and busy streets. As well, as the article above implies, as even going as far as hiding the empty boxes our precious new stuff came in.

Of course, it is true when people counter this by saying something like ‘but crime has always been with us’ and ‘it was worse, not any better, in the past’. This may indeed be true, but the point is that we are supposed to be moving on, getting better. Society should be moving forward, not back.

The saddest part of this is the growing acceptance of the fact that society, if not growing worse, is not really improving for the majority of us. Yes, we are getting materially wealthier, but it seems we are spending increasing amounts of our money, time and effort on protecting ourselves, and what we have. Consequently, we live in a state of anxiety that one day we could have it taken from us by an increasingly bold, aggressive and uncompromising criminality that appears to have taken over the world outside our doors.