Conceptual slippage

I'm not usually one for semiotics and the like (semantics, even) - at root because I tend to think there is a real world out there which exists prior to what we call it, and that's what we should concentrate on understanding and changing - but sometime you have to accept that what things are called is important.

Which is why the slippage in terminology reported here is so interesting. A 'probation' service which is called a 'public protection' service would seem to have a very different role and mission to that usually envisaged. As the writer of the piece says, probation should be about reintegrating offenders into society - getting them housing, work and generally resettled - with the aim of stopping them from offending again. If public protection is the main aim, where does that leave such notions? It either sidelines them, or it's a purely cosmetic exercise.

Which is of course not out of the question. Changing the names of things is an easy way to score a few political points. And after all, who could be against public protection? But sometimes we need to be careful what we wish for. It may start off as purely cosmetic, but there is surely a slippery slope argument to be made. Once it says public protection in the tin, there will be pressure to make sure public protection's inside, too. Which, again as the writer linked above says, is surely what we already have the police for?

Police make first direct arrest using spy drone

So this is what they look like.

Merseyside police have claimed the first arrest made after using a spy drone to track someone, albeit that they appear to have broken aviation law while doing so. (D'oh!)

Which kind of answers one point I made here. But just because these things are (potentially) useful to police, does this mean they should automatically have them? At a time when most crime is continuing to fall, do the police need even more powers of surveillance than they already have?

While there is much debate about ID cards and other high profile civil liberty issues there seems to be much less about these more mundane aspects of police and government surveillance. But they are potentially just as insidious. I don't think I'd automatically rule out drones, specifically, but things like this need to be much more fully, and thoughtfully, debated than currently seems to be the case.

Those pesky decimal points

This is hilarious. There's some good commentry over at Next Left, too.

The most immediate points are I guess that either (a) the Tories are so out of touch that they thought the erroneous figures were simply true or (b) that they so badly wanted them to be true they just ignored any doubts they might have had. So far, so politician.

But I think the more interesting points are raised in the Next Left comments. The 'this just chimes with people's direct experiences' meme raises its head (and I paraphrase - the point is well made and not just parroted out). That is, people don't believe national level statistics, or they swallow major errors such as the above, because what they see around them is decline, decay and disorder. But as Sunder Katwala points out there isn't actually much evidence for this.

Most people, when asked, generally say that things are getting better, or at least not worse, in their local areas (see chapter five here, for example, in relation to crime and disorder). It's exactly at the national level that they see things getting worse. So we're right back to a point I've made (hardly originally) before - people use crime and disorder issues to vocalise their sense of unease about the nature and extent of change in society even when what they think is going on 'across the country' directly contradicts their own local experience.

Politicians (of all parties) prey on this, whether consciously or unconsciously, because it prepares the ground for good sound bites and populist rhetoric ('something must be done!'). Which I guess is another reason why it's so easy to misplace decimal points.

Love this

A bit off topic for this blog, but still........

'Climate deniers smackdown'

Tory plan for police commissioners

To the British Academy (no less) to listen to Ian Blair speak on 'Policing: Continuity, consensus and controversy'. A quite enjoyable jaunt through 180 years of police accountability, with a convincing call for a new Royal Commission on Policing to sort out the mess surrounding police accountability in England and Wales. A few details on the evening can be found here.

Most striking was Blair's attack on current Tory proposals for elected 'police commissioners'. This can be found in sketched out in the Tory's 'draft manifesto' for crime, which states they will:

replace the existing, invisible and unaccountable police authorities and make the police accountable to a directly- elected individual who will set priorities for the policing of local communities.

I agree with the former Chief Constable on this one. This plan sounds appallingly ill thought out and potentially very dangerous. For one thing, it's not at all clear how this 'directly-elected' individual will fulfill their role. Blair suggested they will operate entirely through the existing chief constable, making them in effect his/her boss - an employer with only one employee! Any other arrangement would be even more bizarre, as the 'individual' would then be in the position (presumably) of being able to countermand the chief constable's orders....

But much much worse of course is who the individual is, how they are elected, and what manifesto they are elected on. It doesn't take too much imagination in an age of voter apathy and low turnouts to envisage a BNP 'commissioner', with control over setting the 'priorities' of local police. Even setting aside the shadow of the far right, the level of crass political populism which currently surrounds crime debate in this country would not bode well for the election of 'individuals' with balanced policy for crime control.

If this is representative of the quality of Tory plans for crime and justice then I think we should be very concerned.

Why 'Broken Britain' is a myth

There's an excellent article in the Economist which, as one of the commentators below it notes, should be on the front page of every newspaper in the country. It pretty comprehensively skewers the Cameronite myth that we're all 'going to hell in a handcart'. On most of the indicators mentioned - e.g. crime, child murder, teenage pregnancies - things are usually better, and certainly no worse, than in recent times, and often over a far longer time period (crime is at about 1981 levels, for example).

The key question then becomes: why? Why do people think things are so much worse than they actually are? There's no doubt that many people buy into Cameron's thesis. Aside from the obvious (the press, for one thing; late-modern angst/insecurity, for another), I think two factors might be quite important. One is the cultural resonance of the war/post-war period/1950s, which are remembered, rightly or wrongly, as a halcyon period of cohesion and integrity against which present times can only compare unfavourably. And the comparison is often made, I think (just look at the continued resonance of World War II in British life). Of course the irony is that, in as much as this picture is true, this period was more cohesive because of little things like (more or less) full employment, greater job security, social stability and so on, all things that Cameron's party have done their level best to destroy.

Second I think the impact of recent immigration from Eastern Europe must be taken into account. Not because of the numbers of people involved, or because immigration is linked to crime or anything like that (it seems that by and large immigration leads to less crime) but because this has been immigration to parts of the country hitherto more or less untouched in this regard. The shires, county towns and similar places have for the first time experienced relatively large-scale inflows of 'foreigners'. And the middle-England types who live in these places, and who form the core audience for the Mail, Express and the Tories, don't like it. To them immigration is something that happens in cities, and should basically stay there. It's nice if you can get a curry after going to town for a show, but a Polish shop on the high street is just a step too far. Saying you're worried about crime and disorder are, on this account, in part ways of talking about the cultural threat people who have never experienced immigration currently feel. A threat whipped up and fed upon by the press, for sure, but I think felt subjectively to be real by many people.

Just two suggestions, obviously, and there must be much more going on. But I think factors like these, that is things that are 'real' in people's lives (nostalgia for a lost golden age, the experience of change associated with unexpected immigration) can help explain why Cameron's arguments find a lot of support, even though they are demonstrably built on sand.