Our defeatist Home Secretary
James Forsyth 6:06pm
Jacqui Smith’s comment about why she doesn’t walk around at night sums up what is wrong with the establishment attitude to crime. Here’s the exchange between the Home Secretary and Isabel Oakeshott:
IO: Would you feel safe, walking round, say, Hackney, at midnight on your own?
JS: Well, no, but I don’t think I’d ever have done. You know, I would never have done that, at any point during my life.
IO: Why not?
JS: Well, I just don’t think that’s a thing that people do, is it, really?
Implicit in Smith’s answer is the belief that crime is inevitable and that if you don’t want to be mugged you don’t go out late at night. As the reduction in crime in New York shows, it doesn’t have to be this way.
As long as politicians and officials treat crime as an inevitable fact of modern urban life it will never be dealt with. What we need is a Home Secretary, police chiefs and civil servants who don’t accept that we all have to accept that walking around after dark is a risk. If we elected our police chiefs, I doubt that they would carry on viewing crime as just a fact of life.
If you look at New York’s crime statistics it is clear that crime has been reduced not just displaced. Indeed, I was in an “up and coming neighbourhood” in Brooklyn over New Year and I felt considerably safer walking around there in the wee hours of the morning than I would in most of London.
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Comments
Nicholas Millman
January 21st, 2008 7:15pmTo be effective policing has to be highly visible, confident and uncompromising. That does not mean it has to be uncouth, modelled on TV cops, or performed by scruffy Phil Mitchell look alikes who don't wear caps on their bald heads, chew gum and talk 'ard. It needs to stop wearing black & white (too much like the SS), put on caps and helmets and go back to blue shirts, like most European forces (who are invariably smarter). It needs to concentrate on the streets and to reclaim them, not worry about what people are doing in their bedrooms, on the internet or on horses at the weekends. In short it needs to get back to basics - less "Bill" and more "Heartbeat". The idea of elected police chiefs, strictly immune from politics and independent of government, whether central or local, is a very good one.
Lee Jakeman
January 21st, 2008 8:20pmSpot on, Nicholas.
adrian drummond
January 21st, 2008 8:29pm"the establishment's attitude"... Can we assume, James, that the The Spectator is not part of the establishment?
Austin Barry
January 21st, 2008 8:34pmBlimey,not "Heartbeat" rather more "The Sweeney" I think Guv.
Ben
January 21st, 2008 9:00pmOh for goodness' sake grow up. This is partisan hysteria of the most laughable variety. Would any sane woman, at any point in recent history, have promenaded through the streets of Hackney in the dark? The Home Secretary should be applauded for erunusual (and probably inadvertent) candour. No doubt this blog will continue to complain about the robotic New Labour jargon that its reaction to this straightforward remark so encourages.
bigbertha
January 21st, 2008 10:53pmabsolutely agree Ben...this sounds like another Andrew Neil rightwing rant about the benefits of living in New York (yawn.....)
Nicholas Millman
January 21st, 2008 10:56pmRun that last sentence by me again, Ben. I think I know what you think you mean but I'm not sure if you really mean what I think you think it means. Education, education, education. . . 'nother bit of robotic New Labour jargon.
Steve the Student
January 21st, 2008 11:10pm"Well, I just don’t think that’s a thing that people do, is it, really?" What hole do these people live in that they are so out of touch with the Real World. What if you have no choice but to walk through Hackney at night? (which, at this time of year is about 4pm onwards)
Fergus Pickering
January 22nd, 2008 6:49amDo you know, it never occured to me that the police in their new gear looked like the SS. It wasn't La Smith saying that she didn't walk about Hackney at night that got to me, but that she bought a kebab PERSONALLY. That's taking your life in your hands so many ways. Do you think a kabab is more ethnically right on than a bag of chips?
Ray
January 22nd, 2008 9:23amBen - the problem with New Labour Britain is not just that women are afraid to walk the streets at midnight, but that it's getting to the point in many areas where grown men are wary of walking the streets at midday! Meanwhile, McBean's Government concentrates on finding new ways of criminalising the law-abiding; and police chiefs retreat into their stations, the better to study and memorise their equality and diversity targets.
William
January 22nd, 2008 9:37amI agree, Ben. Is Brooklyn even one of the 'rough' areas of New York? I'm not sure. A quick Net search finds unemployment rates of 5.6% for Brooklyn and 17% for Hackney (which is not to say that unemployment inevitably leads to crime or is in any way an excuse for crime but it is a factor). Are they even comparable? I didn't read into Smith's comments that crime wasn't worth trying to reduce merely that an admission that it is a fact and is a long-established fact in many areas.
Kevyn Bodman
January 22nd, 2008 12:59pmThe first comment from Nicholas Millman: absolutely right about how the police should conduct themselves and be SEEN. As for elected police chiefs, yes and no. Elect them by all means, but it would be difficult to keep them immune from politics because political parties would promote or endorse candidates. But maybe some avowed independent candidates would stand, and each district would have a choice of how 'tough' or 'soft' it wanted its police force to be. Will our politicians see the sense in this?
John Whitworth
January 22nd, 2008 2:24pmI should have said this before. Smith witters on about walking the streets at night not being what people do. Suppose, like my daughter, they close up for PizzaHut at twelve thirty and then... Do what? Jump into the car? She hasn't got one. Take a bus. There isn't one. What she actually does is phone Daddy who drives out in pyjamas to pick her up. Of course she could take a taxi for a tenner or two hours pay.
Verity
January 22nd, 2008 2:52pmWilliam - Brooklyn's a huge borough - the whole of NYC only has five boroughs - so it depends which part of Brooklyn. Brooklyn Heights is very swanky. BTW, Jacqui Smith should walk more as she is much too heavy.
James Strong
January 22nd, 2008 6:02pmVerity- I don't think much of Jacqui Smith's politics but from TV I find her rather attractive. Maybe she's been lucky with camera angles, or maybe she just feels comfortable in her own skin and that comes across. Women in their 40s don't need to look like Elsa Benitez.
Max Kaye
January 22nd, 2008 6:49pmGreat article by Libby Pervis in today's The Times. She asks bluntly: "Is the Home Secretary an idiot?"
Max Kaye
January 22nd, 2008 6:57pmOoops! Total mangling of Libby's surname. It is, of course, Purves. My apologies.
Roy
January 23rd, 2008 7:52amIs this the type of person the Brits vote in to look after their affairs? Are these the best comic replies to a stultifying reply from an Home Secretary?
William
January 23rd, 2008 10:44amJacqui Smith's alternative reply was to lie and state that she always walked around Hackney at night and that there was no crime. This is the kind of answer New Labour might have given a few years ago. I don't see the point in castigating politicians for giving honest, if unpalatable, answers. It only encourages them to lie/spin.
mark
January 24th, 2008 1:36amsure honesty is good - but for a professional politician the answer was poor, surely? What's wrong with "crime is an issue no I don't walk around at night, but I recognise that this is a key issue and will work hard to sort it" - or words to that effect. The subsequent claim to have bought a kebab barely warrants a comment - pathetic
Hyder Ali Pirwany
January 25th, 2008 2:44pmIt is about time that the Home Secretaries (present and future) also paid attention to the family problems of the teenagers and young adults. This will start a chain reaction of solutions that I hope will be the beginning of the end of our problems.