Police & Thieves

There’s an article on crime and public perception of it at The Grauniad’s CiF, by Ian Loader, who thinks we worry about nothing too serious, apparently:

There is, in fact, good evidence to the contrary - evidence that the majority of citizens go about their lives without being affected by or thinking about crime; that they feel ambivalent towards punishment;

The problem more so is that in almost everything we do, every moment of the day, seems to reinforce the idea that ‘out there’ there is a world of crime and disorder much worse than it ever used to be ‘back in the good old days’.

Burglar alarms on our houses, locks on our windows, bolts on our doors. CCTV cameras on the streets we walk down, police in stab-proof vests and in pairs, police helicopters overhead through the day and night, car alarms, immobilisers, removable in-car entertainments systems, ‘don’t leave your valuables on display, lock all the doors when stopped at the traffic lights, bouncers on the doors of ordinary pubs, kids so scared they carry knives and guns, security guards in shops with shop-lifting detectors on the doors, and so on and on and on.

Yet I am only 48 and I can remember a time when there was none of this stuff, at all. Pubs, shops, car-makers, the police, the armed kids and us ordinary folk would not go through all this hassle and expense if we didn’t think there was any reason for it, would we? That is why people’s ‘perception’ of crime seems to be so high, despite whatever dubious statistics are produced to say otherwise. We all feel that yes, there MUST be something happening out there, something new and something no-one seems to be facing up to, otherwise why would we feel as though we are the ones living inside some high-security prison every moment of our lives.