Bill Bratton’s Approach Provides Ammunition for Tories and Labour Alike

It’s always worse elsewhere. That, at any rate, is one conclusion to be drawn from this question:

This is consistent with polls that find twice as many people think crime is “Top Three” problem for the country as a whole than consider it a major problem for their own family. Doubtless there are many reasons for this discrepancy, among them the way in which crime is reported by a breathless, always-indigant media. Nevertheless, perceptions matter in life as in politics and cannot be wished or even, sometimes, persuaded away. 

One aggravating aspect of all this post-riot contemplation is the way in which the violence has been taken as proof that my long-held theories, pet projects and favoured hobbyhorses have been the correct, indeed the only sane, theories, projects and hobbyhorses to hold, pursue and favour. And yet, as Fraser has argued persuasively, there’s much we simply do not know.

In fact, most commentators and politicians have a point even if none have the whole answer. Nor is there a useful template of policies that can cure all ills. If there were we might have used it already. Bill Bratton’s record in Boston, New York City and Los Angeles is highly impressive and the NYC approach has plenty to recommend it even if, as is sometimes forgotten, American police departments that took a different approach (such as, if memory serves, San Diego) also enjoyed dramatic decreases in crime since the 1990s.

Those police officers bristling at the idea of importing American “supercops” have (half) a point too. There are parts of British cities where such approaches might well be thought useful; it does not follow that all American lessons are so easily transferrable. The cultures are different: from 2000-2002, for instance, New Yorkers were three times as likely to be murdered as Londoners. Even Glasgow (63 homicides per million population) had a lower murder rate than San Francisco (82 homicides per million). Since then violent crime has fallen further still.

Politically, of course, it may prove difficult for the coalition to maintain its pressure on the police budget. Intuitively, fewer police officers must lead to more crime or, put another way, fewer crimes being solved. This may be so, though how police officers are used is surely even more important than their numbers. As Jay Newton-Small points out in a new TIME piece featuring Bill Bratton:

In New York City he [Bratton] had 36,720 officers, or 1 for every 218 residents; in Los Angeles he had only 9,320 officers, or 1 for every 429 residents. London currently has 32,500 officers, or 1 for every 241 residents.

Indeed, Bratton’s record in Los Angeles is probably more remarkable than his achievements in New York. Even so, police reform  – though do they really need additional powers? –  and police numbers is only part of the matter. Deterrance matters and so does boosting confidence in the police but social conditions and opportunities cannot be avoided either. Take it from Bratton himself. Asked by the Freakonomics guys to comment on the continuing fall in US violent crime despite the economic downturn, he had this to say:

There is no immediate causal relationship between poverty or economic downturns and crime. An increase in employment or a decline in GDP usually will not lead to a commensurate increase in criminal activity. This is because most poor people are not criminals and never will be, even if their circumstances grow markedly worse. They are more likely to take the pressures of bad times out on themselves and their families: suicide rates and domestic violence rates often rise faster in downturns than property crime and violent crime against strangers.

This statement comes with a major proviso, however. Extended and severe downturns that engender long-term unemployment rates of 15 or 20 percent in poor and minority communities can have criminogenic effects, not only because they foreclose economic opportunities, but also because they perpetuate an underclass culture that fails to educate and socialize young men. As these young men grow, they become the foot soldiers for crime of all kinds, including drug dealing, robberies, burglaries, auto theft, and other larcenies, as well as targeted and random shootings in the public square.

Such extended downturns are also likely to cause revenue shortfalls at the state and local levels that may result in sharp cuts to policing and other government services, as is already happening now. These cuts tend to reduce dramatically the staffing flexibility of police managers and the very innovative policing programs that have helped drive the crime decline of the past 20 years because the resources that remain are needed for baseline operations. If the police are disabled in this way just as a larger pool of crime-prone youth comes on the scene, you might see a repeat nationwide of the circumstances that drove crime in New York City in the late 1970s and 1980s. Disabled significantly by the New York City fiscal crisis and subsequent layoffs of police personnel, the NYPD failed to contend with the emerging crack epidemic of the early 1980s, and violent crime surged. With these dual factors – poorly socialized youth and weakened police departments  – simultaneously at work, the long-term outlook for crime could worsen significantly, and the positive crime trends of the past 20 years could be reversed.

So, like everything else in this complicated business this is a Yes, but… answer and one, frankly, that supports some aspects of the present government’s thinking while also endorsing elements of the opposition’s critique. If that seems dangerously reasonable it may be because one should not expect any one political party or persuasion to have the answers even if, for once, they may be close to agreeing on what the questions should actually be.

Almost everyone now agrees with that old (and brilliant) New Labour slogan “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” and, indeed, despite the temptation to think otherwise, there been some progress on that front, even in some of the most difficult arenas, though more, evidently, needs to be done. Which is another way of saying, I suppose, that (fiscal matters excepted) the most important member of the cabinet right now is Iain Duncan Smith.