Marvellous

No comment needed, really .....

What he said

Following up on the BBC interview with Jody McIntyre, I think this is the best summary of the real issues I've read so far.

What is the MPS thinking?

Another demo, another round of stories that raise serious issues about how the Met police these events.

This is particularly egregious -  and fantastic to see that the police are not the only 'great British institution' to engage in the bullying of wheelchair users (not that being in a wheelchair makes you automatically defenceless or helpless, of course, as Jody McIntyre demonstrates toward the end of the interview) - but some of the stories coming out around the kettling last week are if anything even worse.

If reports such as this are true, and the Met is using kettling as a tool of collective punishment intended to dissuade people from attending demos in the future, then we are talking about policing practise that far far exceeds any reasonable remit. There are many other reports of the events last week, e.g. here, but these talk only of collective punishment in the abstract. The post on Critical Legal Theory is one of the first I've seen that implies officers on the ground know that this is what they're doing. I say practise, rather than policy, because I sincerely doubt that it is a policy in any formal sense. But it doesn't have to be if the officers involved understand what they are doing to be directed in this way. And it's hard to interpret the request to shut the coffee shop that the people 'contained' were using - not smashing up - in any other way.

Random unprovoked violence on the part of the police, while never, ever, acceptable, is at least understandable 'in the heat of the moment'. Human frailty and all that. Those who engage in it could and should be weeded out on a case-by-case basis without undermining the whole notion of 'policing protest' (that they aren't is of course a major problem in and of itself, but not what I'm getting at here). Deliberately depriving people of their liberty in order to deter them from exercising their democratic rights is an entirely different thing. It does indeed suggest that the protest is not being policed but attacked.

Student fees debate

This has to be the best piece concerning the actual substance of the Browne Report I've read. It's over a month old now, but as far as I'm aware the vote in the Commons on Thursday conformed to all the major points covered.

What shines through particularly clearly is the critique of the market fundamentalism that lies at the core of the report's - and the coalition's - thinking. Can we look forward to other important policy areas being totally driven by the spending preferences of 17 year-olds? Which is not to criticise 17 year-olds - a housing policy entirely driven by the spending preferences of the 50+ age group would be just as scary (as well as being not too far away from what we actually have at the moment).

I know I should be used to it by now, given that market mechanisms of the type proposed by Browne seem to be central to almost all policy change that has occurred since about 1980, but I'm constantly amazed by the vacuity of the (usually unspoken) assumptions about human nature and social action that lie behind them. As Collini points out, the outcomes of 'reforms' such as these seem almost inevitably to strengthen and entrench existing financial, political and social hierarchies. One of the prime reasons they do so is that people emphatically are not perfectly informed rational consumers, individually or collectively. This is is why, despite the best efforts of Thatcher, Major and Blair, we still have decision-making processes in most areas of social and political life that do not rely totally on the 'free' market. Why higher education should be chosen to test the idea that important social institutions can be successfully run almost entirely by the invisible hand is beyond me.

Fair play to Ken Clarke

And it's not very often you get to say that!

Old suede shoes was just subjected to a light roasting from John Humphries on Today. Not that he didn't hold his ground.

You can read too much into Today's current style - the presenters seem most likely to go for cheap populist shots, and more interested in getting the interviewee to slip up and say something 'controversial' rather than exploring the issue at hand in any real depth - but it was interesting that Humphries essentially parrotted tabloid talking points for most of the interview. The very idea that someone should say prison is not automatically the best option seemed to offend him (or at least offend his presenter's persona). The default stance was 'prison works'.

So fair play indeed to Ken Clarke for standing up to this very strong media meme, and pointing out some of the extremely negative aspects of imprisonment rates 'on the lower slopes of mass incarceration' (as I think David Downes characterised it). That it took a Tory Justice minister to do this should make many on the Labour front- and back-benches hang their heads with shame.

Murder rates worldwide

Always an interesting statistic.

Data such as these have to be taken with a large dose of salt. But it's intriguing to see England and Wales at 43rd out of 198, with a murder rate of 1.6 per 100,000 (where one is the lowest rate in the world, on this account at least; Luxembourg at 0.4). Exactly equal with France and slightly worse than Canada and New Zealand. Scotland, as ever, has a higher murder rate, coming in 72nd with 2.6 per 100,000.

Plainly, the UK isn't the violent hellhole the tabloids and some government ministers would like us to think it is. But it does have a slightly higher murder rate than equivalent countries - and in Scotland the rate could be characterised as substantially higher. So some mixed messages here, and it isn't easy to disentangle them. Are we to conclude that the UK has something of a problem, compared with some of its European neighbours (Germany, 1.0 per 100,000; Italy and Spain 1.2)? Or that we're about on par with other similar countries in terms of size and economy (France) or 'culture' (Canada, New Zealand)?

My money is on the later, actually, but that's personal preference, rather than thought out position, at this stage.

'Nuff said

By the always excellent Ben Goldacre, picking up a piece from here.

One interesting note is the CiF comments, which split almost precisely between "I support nuclear power, what's your problem, people aren't that stupid"; and "I don't support nuclear power, this is terrible manipulation and typical of the nuclear industry".

It is an emotive issue, of course, but it always a shame when people can't (at least make an effort to) separate their personal preferences from a methodology in this way. Whether you support nuclear power or not you should be able to make a reasoned judgement about the way in which the poll was conducted.

I suspect this links into widespread mistrust of opinion polling and statistical techniques. Many people simply don't believe these can provide truly useful information and are by definition to be mistrusted (being linked to spin, focus groups etc.). So the idea that (for example), the survey might be wrong but the idea of a station still a good idea is a bit too challenging.

The preference for nuclear (or not) comes first, and this informs judgement of the survey, whereas in reality this are two quite distinct things.

Students riot!

Whoda thunk it?

What's interesting is the speed with which Cameron et al get on the cop's backs when something like this happens - as I write he's on the news saying 'the police have admitted they got it wrong' - yet when protesters are injured they are much less ready to say the police mishandled things. It's almost as if the police should be there to protect property, not citizens, if those citizens have the temerity to protest. Whoda thunk that, either. (Note that this doesn't justify the 'rioters', of course, especially the idiot who threw the fire extinguisher.)

I suppose the wider point is that these events weren't the police's fault. The blame lies with the protesters involved. So this shouldn't be used as a way to lever in heavier police presences than there are already at many other demos. Police should be there to facilitate protest, not treat protesters as potential terrorists as they did at the G20. The fact that sometimes the demonstrators break the law doesn't alter this, just as the fact that some members of the public break the law doesn't mean that police should treat everyone has a potential criminal.

Surveying sexuality

A bit off topic for this blog, but the recent ONS report on sexual identity (pdf) raises some interesting questions. As pointed out here the estimate of the number of gay/lesbian/bisexual people produced is way lower than that which came from the last National Survey of Sexual Health and Lifestyles (1.6 per cent of the population, compared with about 6 per cent).

Now, the Integrated Household Survey (IHS), from which the new numbers come, is a truly gigantic survey, with around 450,000 respondents. This means we can place a high degree of certainty around the estimates it comes up with. But is it necessarily the case that the new figure must be 'the answer'? Actually, I'd be very surprised if it was. For one thing, the variation by age is highly suspicious - why should there be as much variation by age as the IHS data seem to suggest: surely the proportions of gay and lesbian people should be more or less constant across age? Ditto the class distribution - why should gay people be over-represented in the professional social classes?

One reason is surely that what is captured by surveys such as the IHS is precisely sexual identity, not sexual preference. This was what the survey was designed to do. The 1.6 per cent of people who report being gay/lesbian/bisexual are those who to whatever extent see their orientation as a component of their identity and, if you like, acknowledge this. Those who don't see being gay as a component of their identity (and who may even be 'in denial') will not, even if their sexual orientation is homosexual. The variation by age and class becomes much easier to understand if you look at things from this angle.

So the survey has not produced an estimate of the number of 'gay people' at all, but rather an estimate of the number of people with a gay/lesbian/bi identity. It is therefore almost by definition an underestimate of the 'true' number (as the 1.5 million profiles on Gaydar, reported in the Guardian piece, would seem to suggest). And that's even before we start to think about response rates, sample design, etc.

This should not be a problem as long as we are all using, and talking about, the same set of definitions, But, of course, we are not, so all of a sudden the old estimates are myths and da gayz shouldn't have as much money spent on them as they do.

This is a really good example of the pitfalls inherent in collecting statistics of this type, and the inherently political nature of much data gathering and use. The extent of these issues is such that sometimes it seems almost counterproductive to collect data of this kind, as it will inevitably be misused. But only almost, and, I think, we should no allow wilful ignorance and journalistic bad-faith put us off!

Cannabis law, again

Yet another police officer has come out in favour of some sort of rehink on the cannabis laws.

You have to wonder, though, just what it'll take for something like this to happen. Something more than a few thoughful comments from a cop, I' guessing, and at at the very least a change of editorial policy at the Mail, Express, Sun et al. I really can't see any government going up against that lot, even one as self-avowdely 'liberal and progressive' as the current one......

Stunningly naive?

Apologies for the lack of posting in recent weeks. Life's been pretty busy, and will continue to be so for a while, so posts may be sporadic for a while.

In the mean time, this seems almost incredible to me. Presumably the idea is that until Andrews is proven definitively guilty he can not (should not?) be penalised by being, you know, sacked.

But this is surely to confuse purely legal considerations of proof beyond reasonable doubt with the lesser levels that are required in other contexts. Even if Andrews is found not guilty of the specific offence for which he is being tried, surely he can't possibly carry on serving as a police officer? Whatever the provocation, and whatever the circumstances, you would have thought his behaviour that night would disbar him from such a role?

This raises an interesting question about the legitimacy of the police, which is likely to be based in large part on the extent to which the police follow the rules and procedures laid down to govern their behaviour. But I don't think this should be taken to mean a rigid and narrowly legalistic rule following - of the type that seems to be behind the decision to carry on with full pay - but a more subtle adherence to a set of commonly accepted norms and ethical principles.

Even if Andrews is eventually cleared, the damage to public trust in the police (although the importance of this type of events can be exaggerated), and to police legitimacy, is likely to have already occurred, since his actions clearly transgress some pretty obvious moral principles and, I suspect, being seen as being profoundly unfair by the public. Such a sense will only be heightened by rigid adherence to regulation over the matter of his pay.

If police are serious about taking account of public opinion, and building trust and legitimacy by improving public perceptions of fairness and demonstrating that police operate within a just moral framework, these are the type of questions that will need to be addressed. Is fairness to be found in 'the rules', or in a more fluid consideration of fairness, justice and what is ethical in a given situation? Which is not to say of course that extant rules can't be adapted in the light of developing understandings, or made less rigid such that events such as this can be avoided.

There but for the grace of God, etc.

This is downright scary. While some of the extremely high rate of police-instigated armed violence in the States is presumably down to the fact that it's just the way things are over there (the very high level of gun ownership and so forth), this has to be a warning of what can happen if support for the police becomes blind support for the police. There is such a thing as too much trust, and certainly such a thing as too much power concentrated in one institution.

While I've not read up on this subject at all, I also wonder if some of this problem - and it must be a problem if officers can get away with excuses such as 'I didn't mean to shoot him, I thought I was using my Taser' - might be down to the local control of both police often the courts in the US. This must foster self-reinforcing old boy's clubs that, in conjunction with the local politicians who usually hold the purse strings, have no interest in properly investigating police misconduct and rather a lot of interest in maintaining the status quo.

No comment, at this stage, on what this might imply for the suggested elected police commissioners in the UK......

Stolen thunder

I was going to write a short post on this story, but then I saw someone else had already said what I was going to, basically, and probably a lot better. So I won't bother.


Except to say that this line from the Comment is Free piece: "The past 15 years have seen an exponential rise in the number of people sent to prison and in sentence lengths" is probably pushing the definition of exponential a bit. Which is not say that prison numbers haven't increased dramatically, or that sentence lengths are longer, because they are. Just that things are bad enough without the need to resort to hyperbole.

'Our drugs war'

If you missed it, this was excellent. Next instalment tomorrow. One of the most sensible programmes about drugs I think I've ever seen.....

Something doesn't add up here

The current government, even more than the last, places active communities at the centre of its policies. OK, so far this is more rhetoric than reality, but the 'Big Society', if it is ever to exist (and that's a pretty big if), will need strong, cohesive local communities at its heart.

So what are we to make of this? How can this plan - if it is a plan - possibly help to increase community cohesion, get everyone pulling together etc etc? Making people living in social housing move after 5 years might help social mobility, although I'm not quite sure why: surely it's jobs that will increase social mobility? But it certainly won't help them form bonds with their neighbours and neighbourhoods of the type that might encourage them to go out and do all the things the governments seems to want them to do.

Or is, as usual, that the Tories think people who live in council houses are not really 'like us', but are minions to be shunted around at will? Or perhaps they are just so far beyond the pale, contaminated by 'benefit culture', 'ASBO culture', whatever-culture that they can't really take part in the Big Society. Indeed, are they the problem against which some Big Action is needed by right thinking middle class home owners who will be allowed to stay in their homes for as long as they like?

It's not all wine and roses in France. Especially if you're Black.

The British police often seem to get a bad press. And rather more often than should be the case, they've - individually or collectively - done something to deserve it. Think G20, think the handling of rape cases, think the ethnic disproportionality in stop and searches; the list is depressingly long.

But it's worth remembering that, for all their faults real or imagined, the British police are far better than many of the alternatives. Seeing this happening just on the other side of the Channel, during what appears to be a 'routine' demonstration, should bring this point home.

Despite what happened at the G20 climate camp last year, I really can't imagine scenes like this, in such a context, in Britain at this point in time. I hope that statement is not a hostage to fortune......

White paper on police reform

I've not had time to read this through yet, so more to follow when I have.

For the moment though, the proposals for elected police commissioners remain extremely worrying - and seemingly unsupported by anyone outside the government (although I stand to be corrected on that). It seems to me one issue here is that elected police commissioners will not automatically 'give the public a voice', since by definition large swathes of that public will have voted for someone else (especially, as seems likely, the commissioners stand on party tickets). In all likelihood many others will not have voted at all. How does democracy, as the simple rule of the majority, work in relation to a public service which must be open and accessible (and accountable) to everyone?

Close to the heart of the problem is, I think, that this government follows the previous administration's apparent belief that policing is something done by/for 'us' against 'them'. Since 'they' don't vote, aren't really part of society and so forth all that remains is for us to decide how best to deal with the problems they create. But there is no simple us and them. Offenders are very often also victims, the 'law-abiding majority' regularly break the law, and today's anti-globalisation protester is tomorrow's doctor, plumber or perhaps even politician.

Reconciling extremely complicated and conflicting positions and issues is a central part of what policing is, and this is not something amenable to control by one person elected on a specific mandate. Collective local democratic control (perhaps organised on similar lines to a parliamentary committee, or something that looks a lot like a Police Authority) seems much better suited to such a task.

Anyone who's seen The Wire will know one possible outcome to all this. Direct political control of the police does not automatically lead to policing in the interests of 'the community' but rather policing at the behest of whoever shouts loud enough - moral entrepreneurs, moral majorities, entrenched local hierarchies, or newspapers concerned only with maintaining circulation. Another possible outcome is the reverse, local commissioners so tightly bound by what they can achieve in legal terms (for example, they will presumably be unable to trump the HRA and or indeed any other relevant legislation, regardless of what their electors want) that they are effectively powerless, something which would run the risk of further damaging public trust in the ability of (local) democracy to ever achieve anything.

One in ten police .....

Channel four news and others are talking about Dennis O'Connors report (PDF) on 'Policing in an age of austerity'. In amongst some very sensible points about, for example, archaic shift patters that ensure less people are on duty on Friday night than on Monday morning, there's one of those really annoying media factlets that always seem to grab the headlines and wind up anyone who thinks about them for more than 30 seconds.

This time it's this:

At present just one in every 10 of all police officers is "visible and available" to the public at any one time, the report warns, despite the fact that policing has enjoyed year-on-year budget increases over the past 40 years.


Seems terrible, no? What are they all doing? Skiving? Filling in forms? Both? Well the clue is that this really does mean one in every ten of ALL police officers (see page 14 of the report). Around half of the total of  police officers and PCSOs are in neighbourhood or response teams - these are the police who are 'available' to the public (the rest are doing other stuff - you know, investigating serious crimes, things like that; some probably are filling in forms, although they might call some of them 'evidence' or 'statements').  Of that 50 per cent, subtract the approximately two thirds not on duty, the others who are on holiday, sick, in training etc, and in turns out that three quarters or more frontline staff who could be 'public facing' at any one time actually are. Not quite so shocking, is it?

No wonder the public are so obsessed with bobbies on the beat - stories like this just inform them that most police aren't doing anything at all. You have to wonder what the report writers were thinking, going with this in their executive summary. Some internal politics here, possibly?

Grauniad editorial on the coalitions record on 'liberty'

Hard to find much to disagree with here. I particularly like "Labour is clinging on to its recent authoritarianism despite losing all authority".

It'll be interesting to see, though, what happens when the quick wins - ID cards, Section 44 stops - dry up and the more difficult stuff, like prisons, comes to the fore. I kind of think Ken Clark really means it. But do his backbenchers?

And then, of course, there are the calls for the return of the death penalty, the banning of full veils, tilts at the Human Rights Act and other somewhat less 'liberty-oriented' missives emerging from the Tories (and, to be fair, elsewhere as well).

Crime down, again

The latest British Crime Survey/police recorded crime data shows another fall in the number of crimes committed and in the risk of victimisation.

This is starting to get a bit spooky. The government certainly can't cope with it, since the latest figures relate to the time when Labour were still in power. So the ConDems are reduced to saying, essentially, that this is the wrong type of crime and if we looked at the sort people are really concerned about, um this might be going down as well, but it's still going up too, dammit! And anyway we don't count it properly. Or something.

Political denial aside, the continued reduction in both recorded crime and the crime reported in the BCS is posing some really interesting questions for criminologists. Most academic criminologists, as far as I'm aware, buy into two key narratives. First, most crime is about/caused by deprivation (relative and absolute), inequality, and other socio-economic 'bads'. Second, police numbers, initiatives, crime prevention measures, and particularly imprisonment can have only relatively minor effects on crime, mainly because of point one. These are certainly my own default positions.

Yet the continuing reduction in crime has occurred over a period in which socio-economic bads were not dealt with in any meaningful way (the latest figures are even post-banking crisis). Inequality, certainly, has probably increased over recent years. And the reduction has occurred at a time of increasing police numbers and record levels of imprisonment.

So what is going on here? How do we deal with these contradictions? Are they contradictions? Are we just plain wrong? I very much doubt it, as it happens. When you look into it properly, the numbers simply don't stack up to support the idea that police numbers/imprisonment can have major effects on the general level or rate of crime (for a whole range of reasons, not least because so few 'crimes' ever make it to court) - although in certain limited circumstances they definitely can.

So what is the story?

Section 44 stop and search powers 'scrapped'

I was reminded of this today, and it's definitely still worthy of comment! This is probably the most relevant part of the story:

 "Officers will no longer be able to search individuals using section 44 powers. Instead they will have to rely on section 43 powers, which require officers to reasonably suspect the person to be a terrorist. And officers will only be able to use section 44 in relation to the searches of vehicles. I will only confirm these authorisations where they are considered to be necessary, and officers will only be able to use them when they have 'reasonable suspicion'."

This news is only to be welcomed, and you have to say hats off to the government for taking this step. Section 44 stops were certainly invidious from the human rights angle - whole parts of the Terrorism Act 2000 revealed the shocking illiberalism of New Labour at its worst - but police powers of this nature are also highly likely also have some direct, negative impacts in terms of the position of the police in the community and, in the long run, the ability of the police to do its job.

Put simply, the use of powers such as Section 44 will in many cases be experienced as profoundly unjust by those members of the public involved (the vast majority of those stopped under the act, remember, had done nothing wrong). Being stopped by the police under any circumstance is, potentially, bad enough. Why have they stopped me (again, which is the woeful experience of many people from ethnic minority groups)? I've done nothing wrong! But under normal conditions police officers can attempt to explain why the stop took place, what their grounds for suspicion were, why they felt it was necessary to take action. If no grounds are needed, this makes explanations much more difficult, if not impossible. In most cases the use of Section 44 must have boiled down to 'because I felt like it' or  'because you don't look right' - what other criteria would there be for making a stop under this legislation rather than under the other powers police have as their disposal?

Section 44 made lawful activity in public places subject to the whim of police officers, removed a vital check on the behaviour of the police, and made the demonstration of procedural fairness on the part of the police much more difficult, not least because this widely used legislation was in and of itself deeply unfair. It must have harmed the relationship between the police and people from communities across the country, imperilling the cooperation police have to have in order to function effectively.

Obviously the above runs the risk of white-washing 'normal' police stop and search practise, which is far from perfect in many many ways. But Section 44 really pushed the envelope in a wholly undesirable direction. And as far as I'm aware it proved almost entirely ineffective at actually catching any terrorists - the arrest rate (for all offences) for Section 44 stops was 0.5% in 2009/10. The conviction rate must have been miniscule.

But I think there is a pretty big silver lining to all this, quite aside from Theresa May's announcement. It is a perfect demonstration of the ways in which good police practice in ethical and normative terms - here, using stop and search powers sparingly, in situations where good reason is needed and  reasons are explained to the people stopped - coincide with what the public consistently say they want the police: fairness, neutrality, respect and the demonstration of proper procedure.  Legislation should be framed to encourage these behaviours not, as Section 44 did, discourage them.

How to lose friends and alienate people

Police officers recorded trying to stop 16 year old taking photos of military parade.

Top marks to the young man for standing up for himself!

Domestic violence and the World Cup

This story caught my eye yesterday. The 'End the fear' scheme set up in Manchester seems like a very good idea, and viewed from a positive angle any increase in the reporting of domestic violence is to be welcomed.

But I think there are several problems with the way the story is presented. Most importantly there's no evidence that acts of domestic violence increased - the reporting of such acts went up, at a time when women were (quite correctly) being actively encouraged to come forward. We don't know if more domestic violence was occurring, of if the same amount was going on but more of it was coming to the attention of the police.

This has two unfortunate implications. Firstly it adds credence to the idea that a certain type of man (and we can probably guess which type - working class football fans) can be provoked into violence simply by their team losing. This seems to me to tap into cultural stereotypes amount working class people as irrational, easily provoked etc. I may be reading too much into this aspect of the story, but I kind of doubt it.

But leading on from this, and much more importantly, I think the story as presented downplays the extent, and frequency, of the violence suffered by some women. I'd be very surprised if many of these cases are 'new', in the sense that it was the first time the woman involved had been subjected to violence. It seems much more likely that this was usually the latest in a series of attacks, but the woman was on this occasion encouraged to come forward by the publicity around the scheme. So rather than an increase in domestic violence linked to the world cup, we're actually just getting a better picture to the real level of 'everyday' violence.

Stories like this have the unfortunate effect of both 'othering' crime - domsetic violence is committed by lumpen proles who get wound up by football matches, unlike nice middle class people - and downplaying the real level of victimisation suffered by women.

Police numbers

In the spirit of political evenhandedness, tonight's short post is on the fascinating subject of what the Con/dems are going to do about police numbers. Well actually it is quite interesting, once you get under the skin of it a bit. And perhaps even something the new government might get right.

This was of course something of a holy grail for New Labour (and indeed appears to have been for the SNP in Scotland). More  police was inevitably seen as a good thing, in much the way that more prison(ers) was, in essence, also seen as just the right thing to do. But, given the lack of any robust evidence (much evidence at all, in fact) that more police=less crime, perhaps this holy cow needs to be poked around a bit, if not actually humanely slaughtered. And that's certainly what the Home Office spending review hints at, with numbers like 20,000 less officers being mentioned out loud, although you can't help feeling that the 40 per cent cuts figure is scare-mongering to make what eventually does come seem not do bad.

It seems very easy for many people to assume that less police is automatically a bad thing. It will certainly be presented as an efficiency saving (cutting admin and bureaucracy) which leaves 'front-line services' intact. But perhaps less police, doing less things but hopefully doing them better, might not be such a bad thing after all. It often seems we live in one of the most over-policed countries in Europe, with a police presence demanded at almost any event. They often seem superfluous. For example, if people are just getting along with things at a small demo, or a street party, or a little festival or whatever, do officers really need to hang around? After all, we usually get on with life pretty well knowing that the police are there if needed, not hanging around our every move waiting for something to happen.

Who knows, less police doing less things but better might actually make people feel a bit more confident about what they do do! Although having said, where this leaves the apparently insatiable public demand for more bobbies on the beat is anyone's guess - that's surely something the government can't be seen to threaten. Or is it?

Public confidence in the police (part 12,329)

So, continuing the hopelessly un-timely nature of recent posts, we return to Theresa May's dismissal of the PSA23 confidence target (PDF).

As noted previously, very mixed feelings on this. There's no doubt that the specific question was a complete dog's dinner that not only shackled police performance to that of the local council in a way probably entirely foreign to most members of the public. It also included the startling methodological innovation of a quadrupled barrelled format (police and local council; crime and ASB). And those problems are essentially the hors d'oeuvre before the main course of whether a single-item measure of public opinion, no matter how valid and accurate, should be the over-arching performance measure for the police. Not because public opinion isn't important - it certainly is - but because the extent to which opinion is entirely, or even primarily, tied to things the police actually do remains rather unclear. Diffuse concerns about the nature and direction of social change might be just as important influences on people's opinions as what transpired the last time they had contact with a police officer, in the aggregate at least.

And yet, it is because what people think about the police is so important, in terms of cooperation, deference to officers at times of stress, for compliance with the law - in the final analysis, the entire practise of policing by consent - that we should be very concerned about recent developments. The emphasis on pubic confidence arose, remember, out of a general recognition that public opinion surrounding the police is problematic, in some communities and sections of society at least, and there exist pockets of real alienation from the uniformed police and the wider society they so often represent. Even among the safe, comfortable middle classes, who in general continue to profess great support for the police, it is possible to detect significant issues with trust and an undermining of the legitimacy of the law (witness the way almost no-one thinks traffic policing is sensibly conducted, that speed limits apply to everyone except oneself, etc. - see here for a proper discussion of this specific issue).

With the best will in the world, will increasingly cash strapped forces continue to emphasise public confidence in the same way as in recent years if there is no target involved? On first glance it seems unlikely. Furthermore, it remains unclear as to what the government will replace the current regime with, although presumably the elected commissioners will figure in a significant way.

We should not forget that all the current evidence suggests that the best tool police actually have at their disposal to enhance public confidence - the best thing they can actually do - is improve the way officers interact with individuals and the way local forces interact with communities. This was, potentially, a classic win-win situation. Those concerned with continued problems in the relationship between police and community saw a way to encourage the police to behave in more procedurally fair and respectful ways, and police managers got a relatively easy and extremely cheap way to address their targets (although, of course, the ridiculously short-time scales imposed by the previous Home Office regime mitigated against any real progress being visible within the time frame allowed).

But if the new regime reverts to a classically instrumental focus on crime reduction we could be faced with a lose-lose situation. Much police work is of necessity instrumental and short-term, in that it is directed at problems which need a rapid and effective proximal solution. But if the policy emphasis is directed too heavily in this direction, and switches away (arguable, even further away) from developing styles of policing which treat citizens and communities with dignity and respect, not only do we risk losing sight of ethically and normatively desirable styles of policing, but we also run the risk of (further) de-legitimising the police in the eyes of those they police and serve, with all the consequences this will have in terms of cooperation and compliance with the law.

Put simply unfair policing will likely generate, in the long run, more crime. Most police officers of course treat most people fairly and with respect most of the time. But a switch away from positioning public opinion at the centre of the debate runs the risk of not strengthening support via a focus in the core business of 'fighting crime' but undermining it by losing sight of what policing should be about - working with individuals and communities to build a stronger, safer and (dare I say it) perhaps fairer society.

Policing targets dropped

In case anyone missed it!

More on this tomorrow, if there's time. At the moment, suffice to say I have very mixed feelings about this news. My interest is primarily in the confidence target, and on the one hand it was always somewhat strange to have a performance target so closely tied to a (highly imperfect) measure of public opinion.

On the other hand, public confidence should be very important to the police and politicians, for lots of good reasons. But if there is no target attached, will anyone really care about it?

Like I say, more tomorrow.

My right to buy a drink whenever I damn well please

Well OK that might be a bit strong.

It seems we might be on the verge of another overhaul of the licensing laws, partly on the basis that 24 hour licenses are creating more problems than they have solved. I never really bought the idea that introducing 24 hour licensing was going to reduce crime in any meaningful way. Did anyone, really? I suppose hindsight's a wonderful thing, but surely it was obvious that at the very best people were going to drink the same amount as before, just take a bit longer to do it (and remember in most cases we're only talking about an hour or two extra, anyway). In any case, the vast majority of pubs still shut at the same time they always did, according to this story at least.

But the real point is that would be ridiculous to go back to making almost everywhere shut at 11pm. People will still carry on drinking as much as they do now, surely, just in slightly different places (e.g. hideous niteklubs)? Will chucking everyone out at 11 once again really lead to less problems? I seem to remember staggering closing times was one of the main points from a crime prevention point of view - although perhaps this really hasn't worked, as the police seem to be suggesting.

It just seems like a step back to the 1950s, and would be frankly pathetic compared to the situation in most other European countries. What sort of modern, forward looking country (TM basically every politician) doesn't trust it's citizens enough to let them buy a beer or two at 12.30 in the morning, if they want to?

BCS study of victimisation among 10-15 year olds

Fascinating stuff. The full Home Office report is here.

There are so many interesting points here is hard to know where to start. I think my favourite bit on first glance is the table which shows how the same incident might be interpreted in different ways depending on which criteria you want to use. Really brings home that while an action might be extremely rigidly defined as a crime in law (which is often not the case, but still), this does not make it necessarily so if you think about things in another way. Which of course people do, all the time. Perhaps this underlines the futility of the last government's attempts to make almost everything they didn't like illegal, as if this was going to wave a magic wand and make everything OK. Because a crime is a crime is a crime, right? Wrong.

On the other hand you have to have some sympathy with Alan Johnson's point at the bottom of the Guardian piece. Based on a realistic reading of the situation - and not that of the Graun's own lurid headline - talk of a crime epidemic among the under 16s appears to be greatly exaggerated. The 'victim perceived' risk of crime for 10-15 year olds is 6 per cent, while the 'norms-based' risk is 14 per cent, both substantially lower than the latest adult risk of 22 per cent. Even on the frankly bonkers 'all in law' basis 10-15 year olds are hardly more at risk from crime than those over that age (and probably substantially less at risk than those immediately older them, in the 16-21(ish) group).

As usual, it behoves us to say that all crime suffered by children is bad, but this report will hopefully bring a welcome bit of sanity to the debate.

Birmingham stops camera surveillance in Muslim areas

Good.


Although you have to wonder what's the point of public consultation if it's true that:

officials insisted the £3m project would go ahead following a retrospective public consultation, arguing the cameras would help reduce crime.

That's the bit I really don't get - why is it alright for the 'ring of steel' to be there to stop ordinary crime but not terrorism?

So many questions it's hard to know where to start: are these particularly high crime areas? If so, why not a ring of steel round every such area - is this some kind of trial? If not, why these areas? Durrr, 'cos they're 'Muslim'? So it's because they're Muslim? And some Muslims are terrorists, so it's not about ordinary crime its about terrorism? No, because it can't be about terrorism, because that would undermine public confidence, we've only just realised. Whereas cameras to combat simply 'crime' are OK. So OK that we'll announce the result of the retrospective public consultation before it's even begun. Or should that be retrospectively consult with the public after the decision has already been made then completely ignore what we didn't want to find out in the first place?

Spy cameras to ring 'muslim' area

Meant to write a quick something on this over the weekend. Quite aside the sheer affrontry of the idea - essentially placing a whole community under surveillance - it hasn't taken opponents long to see the fundamental flaw in this as in almost all such plans:

John Hemming, Birmingham Yardley's Liberal Democrat MP, said he could "only see negatives" in the scheme, which would collate data about thousands of law-abiding constituents, leaving criminals to evade police surveillance by "cloning their car or taking the bus". 

You really have to wonder about who comes up with ideas such as this. Not only is it likely to be ineffective in its intended purpose - because, like, terrorists hide and play tricksy and all that - it seems so certain to alienate exactly the communities you need on-side in order to properly deal with domestic terror threats that it's almost as if this was the intended purpose. How do organisations such as the Safer Birmingham Partnership think people are going to react to having their every road movement tracked 'for their own safety'. A better example of how not to improve relations between local communities and the security services I think you'd be hard put to find.

One more worrying point - the councillors involve claim they were tricked into believing that the cameras were mainly there to deal with vehicle crime and ASB. So it's OK to track every vehicle movement into and out of an area if the aim is to deal with graffiti, kids drinking on the streets and the odd fight? Jesus wept.

Wow

The Indian Census is underway. Now that's what I call a major undertaking........

Thousands of section 44 stops rules illegal

Hmmmmmm.

One issue is of course why they've been ruled illegal - not getting ministerial sign off within 48 hours seems pretty much a procedural oversight. But the number which lasted longer than the legal 28 day time period is truly concerning (and the blanket application in London frankly scandalous).

But I think the real issue of concern is what these 'oversights' and 'over zealous applications' mean in relation to how police managers see these quite sweeping powers. As a normal part of the job, perhaps? Something to be used more or less on demand? The number of searches conducted certainly implies a normalised procedure. That was not, presumably, the intention of the original legislation - although some might argue otherwise - and neatly illustrates the danger of introducing legislation to deal with 'unique' situations which go on to become a basic part of, in this case, police practice.

Slow posting

Just a quick note to apologise for the lack of recent posts - first illness and now a conference trip have intervened. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible..........

I missed this at the weekend

'Police leaders attack government' over plans for elected commissioners. You have to say they have a point. I've not seen any evidence or even research on this, or even much in the way of theoretical justification save some hand-waving about 'local priorities' and, according to Nick Robinson on Radio 4, 'using the power of consumerism to shake up the police bureaucracy', whatever that means.

Quite why Police Authorities (made up in part of local councillors) can't do these things, or be reformed in some way to do them if that's what we really want (and I doubt it), is not entirely clear. It seems to be almost entirely designed to be an eye-catching initiative which hasn't been thought through at all. The level of criticism directed at the government from police bodies is pretty unusual, especially so early into a new government, and will hopefully give the Home Office pause for thought.

Women commit crime too - shock revelations

It must be a signal of my decadent, pinko, liberal, moral relativism but I really can't get too worked up about stories like this.

Or rather, I think any increase in violent crime is a bad thing, no matter who's doing it, and the fact that women/girls are involved is surely much less important than the acts of violence themselves. Is a mugging or stabbing worse if it's perpetrated by a women? I can't see that it is.

There always seems to be a kind of submerged sexism in stories like this - almost as if women not conforming to meek and law-abiding gender stereotypes is somehow more disturbing than the crimes they are committing. Or perhaps female criminality is a particular potent example of the 'world gone mad' narrative which permeates much discussion about crime and policing. "Teenage girl muggers? Whatever next! We're all going to hell in a handcart" etc etc.

Anonymity for men accused of rape

This just feels wrong. But I'm not totally sure why. I guess it's partly because the accused in other cases don't get the same protection - although the 'accusers' in other cases don't get anonymity, as rape victims do, either.

Perhaps it's a genuine case of the intention being worse than the act. Apparently this move is intended to protect men who are falsely accused, which immediately makes it seem as if false allegations are common. I've never seen any real evidence that this is the case, so it really makes it look like women who come forward with an accusation of rape will experience another layer of doubt, suspicion and difficulty.

Guardian 'datablog': the DNA database

I like this 'Datablog'. Although it's pretty scary to see that some police forces already have over 10 per cent of the population in their area stored on the DNA database.....

It's also interesting to see how many sample are stored each year - over half a million at the moment. This just reaffirms how many people come into some kind of 'negative' contact with the police during their life time. Presumably each sample stored is new individual so these are not the same people being caught up again and again.

This puts the 'most crime is committed by a small number of individuals' meme in a new light. There is undoubtedly some truth in this claim. But, equally, doing something which leads to an arrest - and a DNA swab - appears to be a pretty common thing (although we should remember that an arrest certainly does not confirm guilt). Outside the 'hardcore' of prolific offenders is a much larger group of people who, perhaps only occasionally, even just once, get arrested.

Media and other representations of 'the criminal' are usually essentialist and of course profoundly negative. Do we really think the 12.5 per cent Northumbrians who have samples stored on the DNA database conform to this stereotype? I doubt it. So how should we think about them and, more importantly, how do we try to ensure that, having been arrested once, they do not go on to be arrested again? Indeed, how do we stop them doing things that might lead to an arrest in the first place? Given these are likely to be, to a large extent, ordinary people, 'lock them up and throw away the key' really shouldn't be an option. So what is?

Neo-Nazi terrorists

It's a point many others have made many times, but I think it bears repeating (yet) again - why does the constant drip, drip of Neo-Nazi terrorists caught, charged and convicted not excite more comment from the press? If these two were Islamists, particularly given the father/son relationship, we would presumably now be being treated to another wave of hand-wringing (can you have a wave of hand-wringing?) about the failure of multi-culturalism, the lack of assimilation, segregation in our cities etc. Yet this story, where it is covered, is treated like the aberration it probably is.

Obviously that was a rhetorical question - we know why stories like this aren't covered more. The people involved aren't brown, Muslim, and haven't moved to the UK from places about which we know little and care less.

But what I find particularly repellent is the way in which ordinary Muslims are constantly asked to 'condemn' Islamist terrorists, as if they are somehow complicit if they don't. I wonder how many of us White Anglo-Saxons will be asked to condemn this pair and their ilk? In the absence of Nick Griffin appearing on the TV (and perhaps even not then), precisely none, I'm guessing.

(More) utter insanity

Good see that many people are prepared to support Paul Chambers in appealing his conviction.

But what's really scary is the number of 'Comment is Free' commenters who think he got what he deserved. For example:

"If you can't do the time. Don't do the crime!

What are we supposed to do with bomb threat hoaxers. Keep writing though so that others get the message. Threatening to blow up airports even if you think it was amusing just isn't funny."

Which just goes to show that some people will support the CJS system no matter how daft are the decisions it takes. 'Over-legitimisation', you might call it - a willingness to support an authority even when it makes crazy decisions. Although strictly speaking, it's legitimacy pure and simple: acceptence of decisions irrespective of their substantive content.

Utter insanity

Well, you wait ages for a post, then two come along at once. This frankly beggers belief, and probably requires no further comment other than an expression of outrage......

I think I've moaned before about poor laws and poor prosecutions which can only serve to de-legitimise the entire criminal justice system, and it's hard to think of a better example than this.

It's not illegal to take photos!

Not much action on here recently, so to get things moving again ....

.... why oh why do they keep doing this? Once called by the security guard the officers involved had a duty to turn up and have a quick chat with Mr Smith. So why not just leave it at that? What happened to the common sense John Yates called for last year? What on earth was the point in searching the photographer in such an apparently hostile manner? Police often claim they stuck in the middle in situations such as the one described and get the blame from both sides. And this is often the case. But when one side is so obviously wrong, what's the point in escalating the situation, rather than use a bit of nouse to defuse it and let everyone go on their way?

Police also have a duty to be fair and neutral. But this is not the same as always steering through a mid-point in every argument (so in this case the man was searched, perhaps in part to appease to security guard and to demonstrate that something was being done, but no further action was taken). Fairness and neutrality is about assessing the rights and wrongs of a situation, deciding on an appropriate course of action, and then explaining it to those involved. If that had happened in this case, I doubt we would be seeing headlines about it in national newspapers.

Pithy economic commentary from Edinburgh

What many of us have to look forward to in the coming months and years, perhaps?

More police = less confidence = more fear?

Lots of interesting points made here, but there is a rather lazy conflation of confidence in the police and fear of crime in the later part. These two phenomena are likely to be related in very complex ways, but however you look at it I think it's hard to believe that less confidence in the police automatically means more fear of crime. Especially if the loss of confidence stems from personal contact with the police and is therefore most likely to be down to the experience of unfairness on the part of the officers involved.

Some of the research quoted looks vaguely familiar, though .......

Measuring public opinion

I think this article is pretty much on the button in raising some concerns about the dominance of opinion polls in the current election and the potential pitfalls involved in trying to use them to second guess the outcome. This is priceless:

Page, however, chose to inform the Radio 4 listeners, without any sense of irony, that six out of 10 voters tell pollsters that they pay no attention to the polls. But here's the problem: 10 out of 10 journalists do.

Of course there are very good reasons why apparently similar (even more or less identical) survey questions can, as Hasan points out, generate really quite different response sets. Was the survey telephone, face to face or was some other method used? Were people contacted at home, via mobile phone, or via the internet? What time of day was it when the interviews were carried out? Even more important are the technical issues: what was the sampling frame? How were the raw data weighted? What was the response rate like?

Now, aside from the issues raised by Hasan - and they probably are quite important, for example if people start to base tactical voting decisions on erroneous polling data - in terms of the election we'll ultimately get the real answer from the election poll itself.

But my interest is with the use of opinion survey data, in the form of the British Crime Survey, being used to judge the performance of the police. Obviously the BCS is not some two bit survey conducted on a wet Thursday afternoon by a small research company. All the issues raised above and many more have been taken into account when estimates such as those linked above are produced. But when Lincolnshire (for example) is given a little down arrow - and implied black mark - on the basis of a 4.9 per cent fall in positive views year on year (see Table 1), what does this really mean? More precisely, perhaps, it surely means something - but is it fair to judge the performance of a police force on the back of such a relatively small shift in public opinion bearing in mind some of the provisos raised above?

Don't get me wrong here. Investigating public assessments of police performance is a useful and worthwhile endeavour, both in and of itself, and because, over relatively long periods, change in public opinion is likely to provide an extremely useful barometer of how well the police are doing both in general terms and in relation to specific elements of performance (dealing with issues of racism within the force, for example). What people think about the police is important and we should be measuring public opinion on this topic. But I'm much less sure that year on year change in point estimates of opinion as measured by single questions can provide much useful information.

Even worse, such an emphasis may generate perverse incentives by shifting manager's attention away from what really matters (which I would claim to be most importantly the relationship between police and community and how fairly people feel treated by police) toward trying to address apparent local problems in 'dealing with crime and disorder'. 'Problems' thrown up, remember, by perhaps 5 per cent more people holding negative views this year compared with last.

Political cognitive dissonance

Reaction to the latest crime stats - showing a 7 per cent fall in both BCS and police recorded crime - is very revealing.

Chris Grayling:
"Any improvement is obviously welcome, but we still live in a more dangerous country than when Labour came to power. The government has presided over a surge in violence, while Labour's target culture means the police spend more time on paperwork than on the beat.

Knife crime remains a serious concern on our streets and Conservatives will make tackling it a priority. Too many families have their lives ruined by low-level crime and antisocial behaviour. This has got to change."

This despite falls in worry about crime and concern about disorder, as well as actual victimisation, in recent years. Obviously the election is an issue here, but it's almost as if politicians (and perhaps the rest of us) have simply lost the cognitive ability to grasp that crime can go down as well as up, and that things can better, sometimes.

Classic headline misdirection alert

Violence against children is up! Admissions to hospital emergency departments for violence related injuries among under-1os rose by 8 per cent between 2008 and 2009.

But hang on, overall violence related admissions are down (slightly) on the year, and have fallen every year since 2001 except for 2007-2008 (when there was quite a strong upwards blip). And the rise among children may be due to more at-risk children being kept at home in violent conditions because of the troubles afflicting many social work departments (so it might be a political/structural problem creating the space for more violent incidents rather than an increase in the number of violent individuals).

So overall, a pretty mixed picture - some good news, some bad, with a genuine suggestion (although it is only that) that institutional problems are implicated. But sod that subtlety, make sure we have a scare-mongering headline suggesting, yet again, that children are more threatened and more in danger than they were yesterday.

See here for more details.

Plain English policing

This is fun. Interesting to see it being picked up elsewhere, too - churnalism at work, I guess.

But you have to feel a bit sorry for Cambridgeshire police. For one thing the headline (or subhead, if you read elsewhere) was written in 'plain English' - people just didn't like what it said! Perhaps if it had been written in police professional jargon they wouldn't have found it so annoying - "Local teams continue to prioritise intelligence-led policing techniques in order to target known offenders. We aim to reduce recidivism within this key demographic".

More broadly, it might come as a bit of a shock to Telegraph readers but policing isn't just about 'targeting offenders'. The largest part is of course responding to calls for service (emergencies and other events), but there's also public order policing, street patrol etc. etc. Resources allocated to these other activities are resources that can't be used in targeting offenders (and vice versa) so, from an internal point of view, the leaflet is simply telling people about how money and time is being spent.

That the article appears to have gone down badly (among reporters, at least) points to one of the dangers inherent in police using newsletters and freesheets to communicate with the public. This can be a useful and desirable thing to do - people have a right to know what their local police are doing and why - but getting even a small element wrong seems to hold the potential to annoy the intended audience and be very counter-productive.

Shameless self-promotion: see here (and here) for more on this issue.

Well that didn't take long

While this story presumably has to be taken with a fairly large dose of salt, the inevitability of it all subsequent to the mephadrone debacle must be triggering an 'I told you so' moment across, well, almost everyone in the country. Bar government ministers, their opposition shadows, and tabloid leader writers, of course, for whom the efficacy of banning drugs appears to be something of a faith issue.

Crime and the election - what's going on?

Since the election was announced I've been religiously (OK, occasionally) checking for crime and policing stories to comment on. But there don't seem to be any! Except for a less than stirring defence of the Tory's plan for elected police chiefs from Philip Blond (rightly being opposed by ACPO, I note), and some rather desultory sniping from Labour about the DNA database there's been very little.

Is it just me missing stuff? Or is crime a bit of a non-issue in this election, up until now at least? If so, why? I guess one reason might be the paper thin differences between the main parties on most issues - although that hasn't stopped them going at it hammer and tongs about who will cut the most, which hardly bespeaks massive policy differences elsewhere.

Surely it can't be a nascent sense of perspective about the relevant importance of crime compared with other issues? You know, jobs, education, health, saving the planet, stuff like that. Actually, probably not, given the continued utter lack of perspective (or indeed truth) about immigration in the tabloids and the complete absence of green issues from the election debate ....

Labour's record on prisons

Now that we actually really definitely know the date of the election, as opposed to just knowing it, the usual look back at the government's record seems to be in order. So to kick off an occasional series, here's a couple of pretty damning stats mentioned in today's Guardian.

1. There are more people serving life sentences in England and Wales than in the rest of Europe combined, including Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. A total of 12,090 compared with 11,477, according to this, although there is no date.

Either we think people in England and Wales are much, much nastier than other people or we conclude that the justice system here - excepting Scotland, perhaps - is considerably more punitive than others. To what end though? It's not that the UK is murder capital of Europe, which might explain some of the difference - murder rates are higher in several western and eastern European countries, for example France, Finland, Portugal, Poland and the Czech Republic. The overall rate of crime victimisation is comparatively high, although not especially so, and this in any case can't explain the difference in the number of life sentences handed down.

2. In 2008, over 5,000 children (aged 15 to 17) entered prison, half for sentences of under six months (we are also imprisoning large numbers of sometimes much younger children, who have committed no crime whatsoever, in immigration detention centres). Not only is this almost certainly higher than anywhere else in Europe, the relatively short sentences suggest that many are not imprisoned for serious crimes. This in a sense is worse than the number of life sentences; these young people are not allowed to vote, drink or even drive a car, yet are held responsible enough for their crimes to be imprisoned for them, as opposed to finding some other way of dealing with their behaviour.

These facts probably do reflect a strain of popular punitiveness in English speaking countries which is stronger than in the non-Anglophone world. Higher imprisonment rates are what some people want. However we are not that much more punitive, by any stretch of the imagination. Furthermore, it is not the government's job to simply accede to such populism, and certainly not stoke it, as often seems to be the case, but to run a sensible and cost-effective criminal justice system which respects the rights of all involved (and does not, for example, simply lock up large numbers of people and throw away the key). There is very little evidence that the use of prison on this scale has much effect on crime rates, and considerable evidence to suggest that it brutalises many of those involved and scars the lives of both them and their families for much longer than the length of the sentence.

Public order policing (again)

I think public order policing is one area which you can identify in which the many police forces are getting things badly badly wrong. Another example, via the Guardian - essentially banning festivals that have been going on for years because, well, why, exactly? Even the local council seems surprised at what's transpired.

At the very least this is bad PR on the behalf of the police. No-one likes a killjoy. But I'm inclined to agree with George Monbiot and others and say that actions like this are fundamentally undemocratic. People should have a right to freely gather, even if the end is simply (gasp!) to enjoy themselves. It's the job of the police to facilitate this, not stop it happening. The fact that 73 people out of c.20,000 were arrested last year is neither here nor there. In any large gathering you're going to get people misbehaving - look at football matches, for example - but that doesn't mean the gathering should be prevented from occurring.

A peculiarly British obsession

When discussing the relationship between police and public in Great Britain one thing above all others always comes up - 'bobbies on the beat'. In the main, the view will be that there aren't enough, and if only we had more then this would somehow magically solve the 'crime problem'.

This is so strong a theme that it appears that press and politicians follow public opinion on this issue, in contrast to their more usual stance of assuming people think a certain way in the face of evidence to the contrary. Think for example about the divergence between how punitive people are thought to be and how punitive they actually are (see here for an interesting discussion of some of the issues). The public obsession with this type of policing is so strong that police officer's have been heard to complain that some people would like a constable standing permanently on their doorstep - keeping the world at bay, presumably.

In this context it's hardly surprising that the Home Office have apparently tried to inflate the proportion of time neighbourhood teams spend 'on the beat'. One issue is the usual one of government setting itself targets (here, the policing pledge) and then having to wangle the figures, to a greater or lesser extent, to meet them. Wangle more, here, I think, because I suspect 'attending neighbourhood meetings' is not what most people would mean by 'on the beat' - and that's before the ASA's concerns about the 80 per cent claim appearing to apply to all 140,000 thousand officers kicks in.

But perhaps another issue is more fundamental. Is it really an efficient use of resources to have sworn officers wandering around the streets waiting for something to happen, or could their time be put to better use? While some beat patrolling will always be a good idea, especially that done by PCSOs, should the police be the first and only institution involved in providing visible agents of social control in local areas? That they pretty much are says a lot about the gradual removal from public space of others who used to do something similar - park wardens, bus conductors and so on - and is probably an example of the gradual colonisation of that space by the criminal law, at the expense of other ways of maintaining order.

One argument is of course that patrolling police make people feel better. And they probably do, to some extent. But is this enough in itself to warrant such expensive activity? Are there other benefits to beat patrols - do they have any deterrent effect, for example?Actually, they might, if limited to crime hotspots, although you kind of get the impression that such targeting would go against the spirit of the policing pledge. What about deterrence more widely? Has anyone done some kind of cost benefit analysis, or is beat patrol considered to be a good in and of itself? If it is, for example in terms of public confidence, how long do the effects last - are they effervescent, only lasting for a few minutes, or longer lived? Do they apply to all people, or are some scared or annoyed by a very visible police presence?

These are all really interesting questions, and I certainly don't think we have answers to them all yet. Which makes it all the more bizarre that the Home Office should make itself a hostage to targets which may not actually be that useful and which in any case it has to fudge in order to achieve. And then undermine public confidence in crime statistics again by playing a bit fast and loose with the figures.

Watching them watching you watching them

Here's another example of the way in which the use of new media techniques look set to alter the balance of power between police and protesters in public order situations.

Only a few years ago this case, if it had gone to court at all, would have been decided on contradictory personal accounts and, perhaps, police video footage (and further back in time, personal accounts only). In either case a conviction would probably be the most likely outcome; that's a guess, but it doesn't seem unreasonable.

The fact that in addition to all the film the police hold there are now thousands of hours of footage of demonstrations and other situations routinely uploaded to Youtube - and definitively into the public domain - seems to mark a sea-change in what police and protesters can expect to get away with. This looks like a situation that police are going to have to learn to live with, just as people involved in demonstrations have over the last 10-15 years.

In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes ...

... and it seems my time has come!

"Ugly criminals"?

"Being very attractive reduces a young adult’s propensity for criminal activity and being unattractive increases it. Being very attractive is also positively associated with wages and with adult vocabulary test scores, which implies that beauty may have an impact on human capital formation. The results suggest that a labour market penalty provides a direct incentive for unattractive individuals toward criminal activity. The level of beauty in high school is associated with criminal propensity seven to eight years later, which seems to be due to the impact of beauty in high school on human capital formation, although this avenue seems to be effective for females only" (Mocan and Tekin 2010).

I want to use this post to discuss a recent paper that appeared in The Review of Economics and Statistics (full version here if you can access it, otherwise the abstract above will have to do). Initially because I though the idea was so mad it was worth a few comments, but having re-read the paper more now because I think it throws up some very interesting points beyond its specific empirical content.

The article is based on analysis of the US National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n=15,338, which is relevant). It uses respondent’s ‘beauty’ (controlling for a very wide range of other variables) to predict self-reported criminal behaviour. It’s worth noting that the mechanisms the paper suggests for attractiveness affecting criminal activity are all social – it essentially claims that the less attractive are more likely to commit crime (and the more attractive less likely) because they are treated differently by those around them, in terms of access to the jobs market, treatment at school, and so forth (hence for example the lower vocabulary scores mentioned above - it's not that 'ugly' people are thick, its that they get treated differently at school and this inhibits their learning process).

Methods and stats

First, let’s get the methods/statistics out of the way. With two provisos they are actually quite convincing. It really does seem that the physical attractiveness of females (although to a lesser extent males – see below) is associated with self-reported criminal activity, in the ways suggested in the abstract above.

The two provisos are quite important, though. Firstly, how is physical attractiveness measured? It turns out by the interviewers in the survey. There is something immediately almost repellent about this, but the authors present some evidence that such ratings are fairly robust, and I don’t want to get bogged down in this point, so let’s just take it as read for now that they do have a somewhat accurate measure of the survey respondent’s physical attractiveness.

The second proviso is even more important. Namely, that the effect sizes they identify are very small. For example, “Being a very attractive female reduces the propensity to damage property by 1.1 percentage points” (controlling for personal and family characteristics). This effect is statistically significant, because of the very large sample size. But is it substantively meaningful? Does it make any sense to concentrate on such a small effect? The authors clearly think so, and up to a point I agree with them – the social world is a complicated place, and the unique association between any one factor (e.g. physical attractiveness) and another (e.g. propensity to vandalise things) is almost bound to be small. If there is a statistically significant association, robust to all the control variables that seem relevant, it probably does mean something.

But on the other hand, there must come a point where an association, although significant, is so small that it really can’t have much meaning – certainly if we want to change the world in some way. A one percentage point difference is interesting in the context of this paper, but would be so if, for example, some sort of policy intervention was being planned? I think we as social scientists do not pay enough attention to the pay off between statistical significance and effect size, and this paper butts right up against that point.

One other point on the specific empirical content – as noted the effect of ‘attractiveness’ on crime appear much more consistent for women than for men. I’m not too sure what to make of this, and neither I think are the authors. While it might be consistent with their theoretical framework (since it appears physical attractiveness as rated by others varies by more among women than among men, it should therefore have a bigger effect), it’s unclear how this fits with ‘explaining crime’, given the well known gender disproportionality in criminal activity.

Three more substantive points

There are (at least) three more substantive points I’d like to make about the paper, again because these seem to me to be relevant far beyond its specific content (there are more but these particularly strike me).

First is the rational choice theory model of criminal behaviour used in the paper. It essentially takes as a given the idea that people commit crimes when there is motive (reward) to do so, there is an opportunity, and the rewards outweigh the potential costs. Yet much recent work on why people commit crime would stress the importance of morals and normative values – to the extent that most people do not commit crime because they do not even see it as an option, even in situations where they would gain from doing so.

Now, this may not make much difference in terms of this specific paper, because we would expect normative orientations toward the law to be evenly distributed across ‘attractive’ and ‘unattractive’ people and thus not affect the results. But taking such a narrowly instrumentalist approach toward decisions to commit crime does I think in the wider context run the risk of over-simplifying what seems certain to be a very complex process.

More serious for the specific claims of the paper is its very one-sided view of what crime is. The types of crimes covered by the analysis are ‘damage’ (vandalism), burglary, robbery, theft, assault and selling drugs; essentially, ‘crimes of the poor’. What about white collar crime? Tax evasion? Fraud? Corporate crime? At the very least the omission of a wider range of criminal behaviour limits the claims that can be made by the paper. But worse, it may be that being physical attractive, and thus preferred in the job market to others, opens up greater opportunity to engage in white collar crime (by increasing both opportunity and level of potential gain). So it could be in these cases physical attractiveness is linked to higher rates of self-reported offending. Of course, such a impoverished of crime is not unique to this paper – it seems to bedevil many economic and similar approaches to criminological matters.

But to finish on a more positive note I think this is a very interesting paper not because of the specific claims it makes but because of the way it tries to integrate ‘innate’ characteristic (physical attractiveness), personal proclivities and propensities (to commit crime), and the social world which influences and interacts with them. That is, it takes seriously the idea that people are individuals (and individual), and make personal choices about how and when to act – but their individuality and their choices (and possibility of choices) are structured and limited by the actions of others around them and the social and economic structures in which all are embedded. It seems to me that this kind of empirically robust ‘cross-level’ analysis is exactly the kind of thing we should be trying do more of in British criminology.

The hyper-criminalisation of normal human beahviour

By normal human behaviour I'm talking of course about sex and drugs (rock and roll appears to be OK, at least for now). Calls for a 'legal high' (mephedrone) to be banned because it has been linked to the deaths of two lads are complemented by a shadow minister who appears to be saying we should criminalise underage sex to an even greater extent than we do already (or at least punish it more - he's not exactly clear, unsurprisingly).

What is about our current political scene that sees banning, criminalisation and more criminalisation as the only answers to any problem? One answer lies in the very moving interview shown on Channel 4 news with the parents of one of the boys who died. It was awful. But current policy making seems to be largely determined by such emotive moments, rather than a rational debate about the pros and cons of, in this case, making something illegal (class A status has been mentioned, placing mephadrone on a par with heroin and crack). I've yet to see much evidence to suggest that making drugs illegal makes any difference in terms of use or availability (although I stand to be corrected on that).

Don't get me wrong - I think mephadrone is pretty unpleasant drug. I just don't think criminalisation will be some sort of panacea to whatever problems are associated with it - and might even make them worse. This is before taking into account the fact that new 'legal highs' will just spring up to take its place.

Hence the title. It seems to me that taking mind-altering substances are as much a part of the human condition as having sex - and any attempt to over-regulate either is doomed to failure. So let's keep the prison sentences for sexual predators, not teenage fumbles. And let's not automatically ban something because of a few horrible events. At the very least, perhaps there are better ways to deal with the problem.

Update: Another (and interesting) potential reason for over-criminalisation here.