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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   884 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 12, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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If this is to be believed, Britain is basically Ancapistan where you have to pay for private police if you don't want to be robbed. But it's actually worse - you still have to pay taxes for a useless state. The police are too busy stealing lethal weapons like bike wheels and kitchen knives from law-abiding citizens. Or locking you up for harmful tweets.

https://unherd.com/2024/12/the-private-police-patrolling-london/

In 2018, the area suffered 65 break-ins, a criminal romp that nonetheless failed to stir the short arm of the law. Such an experience now marks suburban life in the capital, with the Met failing to solve a single crime in 160 residential areas of London over the last three years. “The police gave up on this area years ago,” one shrugging resident explains.

British businesses and residents will soon spend £10 billion on private security

Between low morale, a defunding of specialist units, and a generational loss of talent, to say nothing of a “Spanish Inquisition” culture that leaves officers now “afraid to arrest suspects”. A worrying focus on “low hanging fruit” around communication offences hardly helps either, bemoaned one serving officer, even as they lament leadership that wanted to “solve societal ills” instead of busting criminals.

Yet if these private efforts are successful on their own terms — My Local Bobby helped cut vehicle crime in Hadley Wood by 38% — communally financing can be tough, even humiliating, for those who can’t afford it. One man in Fulham describes how a neighbour, who chose not to pay for the road’s private security team, discovered that they were contractually obliged to stand by as his house was robbed.

Need a British version of the Ancap song but it's the grimdark anarcho-tyranny British version where nobody's having fun: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tBH05IowMCE

The cited article should clearly not be believed. It's cherry picking statistics and painting an unrepresentative picture of the realities of crime in London.

There are many legitimate problems with the Metropolitan Police. In recent years they've suffered from poor leadership and a number of incidents that have undermined public trust. Furthermore, many middle class residents have real frustration with a lack of progress combatting crimes such as bike thefts and burglaries.

My understanding is that political decisions have been made to focus policing on more severe crimes - especially counter terrorism operations and sexual offences. Despite this lack of focus from the Met, the article isn't representative of the IRL vibe I've experienced - my partner continues to feel safe walking around our relatively deprived borough alone at night.

London is a big city, there's room for many experiences. But the Home Secretary got mugged in 2018. There are apparently 50,000 phone thefts a year, especially targeting tourists in the city of Westminster. That's way too many. Furthermore, regardless of how many crimes are happening, the police should be working hard to catch criminals as opposed. Law and order is a core duty for the state, it should not be outsourced.

I'd be happy to see them refocusing to crack down on sexual offences but they're starting from a very, very, very low baseline: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grooming-gangs-iicsa-racist-fears-b2007649.html

My understanding is that political decisions have been made to focus policing on more severe crimes

Like locking people up for tweets?

It's worth noting that our black murder rate is about the same as the US white murder rate, and that high-volume violent and property crime is still at less than a quarter of the 1990's peak when measured by victim surveys (which are not affected by declining police reporting) which have used a comparable methodology throughout the period. Knife crime is probably up (it's hard to measure accurately because it isn't common enough to show up in victim surveys or serious enough to be reliably reported to police) but that isn't what the burghers of Hadley Wood are complaining about.

Crime is always out of control according to the media. Crime is always out of control according to the "children, nowadays" crowd. Crime was out of control according to the media and the "children, nowadays" crowd right through the dramatic drop in crime in the nineties and noughties. Media coverage of crime being out of control tells you nothing unless backed up by some form of reliable numbers. And even then you can cherry-pick numbers - the same people claiming that the police-recorded numbers showing falling burglaries are fake are citing police-recorded numbers to prove that violent crime is increasing despite victim surveys showing the opposite.

As far as I can tell, clearance rates for burglaries in the UK are around 5%. If that's the case then crime is literally out of control, in that there's no credible police ability to punish traditional criminals, as opposed to political offenders. Even if they do go to prison, they might just get let out again due to overcrowding.

Since the ONS moved to Newport I understand they shed a lot of their most talented staff and their output has been suspect ever since. It may be that they're right and victimization did fall since the 1990s. Even so, getting away with property crime 19 times out of 20 is pretty bad. Private police spontaneously materializing to meet unfulfilled demand is pretty bad.

It's worth noting that our black murder rate is about the same as the US white murder rate

Is this what the kids call "mask off"? Implicit in the statement seems to be the belief that black people will always be more criminal, and therefore things can't be all that bad in the UK if even black people have a lower crime rate than white people in America. That's cool and all, but I was always under the impression that the population being complained in the UK about came from South Asia or thereabouts, plus maybe the Middle East, in a mirror image to what's happening in the US where they wagged their fingers at Europe because they never had that much of an issue with Muslims in America.

Britain trying the South Africa speedrun it seems.

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