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......