60 Comments
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Liam Foley's avatar

Meanwhile using the wrong pronouns will get you a visit from the police.

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Joseph Clemmow's avatar

So the Labour Party is returning like a dog to its own vomit the same sentimental criminology that has allowed crime to flourish in this country. What’s so maddening is that we know the solution to this problem as El Salvador has demonstrated. we have to endure this rubbish from labour all over again. Bring on Dominic Cummings Start Up Party

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Richard North's avatar

I agree except supporting a party led by someone who does whatever Bill Gates wants does not seem to be the best way forward for our country.

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JonF311's avatar

Bill Gates?

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Richard North's avatar

My comment relates to Cummings' evidence to a parliamentary committee about 2 years ago. Cummings was clearly in awe of Gates who phoned him in March 2020 to dispense advice. Then we locked down and could only be rescued by "the vaccines" which Gates had shrewdly invested billions in. Result - Gates £20billion richer (source RFK Jr). UK £400 billion poorer.

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Neil C's avatar

"(Source RFK Jr)" is hilarious. The man is a mad crank, and not to be trusted on anything.

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Richard North's avatar

It's so much easier to mount an ad hominem attack than to engage with the message, don't you think? Then you can save your energy for all the other social media skirmishes.

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DaveW's avatar

Isn't your comment on Cummings (who never led the Tory party as far as I recall) an ad hominem itself though? And I can think of few clearer examples of the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy than "Gates … phoned him… then we locked down." As I recall, we locked down at least partly because France locked down—whatever the truth is, I don't believe Gates speaking to Dominic Cummings was either a necessary or sufficient cause.

Even if you're right about Bill Gates' wealth in the comment below, this still doesn't justify your accusation that Dominic Cummings does "whatever Bill Gates wants." But, as you say, it's easy to mount an ad hom…

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Neil C's avatar

If you honestly believe RFK Jr on anything, then I feel sorry for you.

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Paul's avatar

I don’t think it’s possible for me to hate the middle class self regarding wankers that actually run this country (as opposed to the hapless elected dupes that think they do). The trail of broken and destroyed lives is left in the wake of somebody who can afford a house in a nice area with good locks getting to feel good about themselves at the expense of people they look down on. lord help my soul.

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Biondo Flavio's avatar

A very powerful piece.

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JonF311's avatar

Well, it's long on outrage mongering, but decidedy lacking on practical solutions. Build more prisons costing what from the public purse? And who will staff them and what incentives may be needed to get them in those jobs? It's easy to complain-- solving problems takes more effort.

Meanwhile many of us in the US would party like it's 1999 if our violent crime rates fell to the UK's level.

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Ed West's avatar

America needs more people in jails too! Common idea in Britain that the US is punitive but completely false. Considering how much a career criminal costs on the outside, locking them up is a great investment.

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Ruairi's avatar

Gallows are cheaper then prisons

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Ian's avatar

Yep, in all honesty there is absolutely no point in keeping the most heinous offenders alive at cost to the taxpayer. They have no value. They will never have value. Just kill them and be done with it.

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JonF311's avatar

Unlebenswertiges Leben. Where have we heard that before?

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Greg's avatar

By and large, your comment would these days be considered beyond the pale - which shows how far from reality we have travelled. For the nastiest kinds of homicide, it is right to kill the perpetrator: justice for the victim and their family, a powerful deterrent, and cost-effective.

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Ruairi's avatar

A lot of our foreign aid should go to building prisons and cops rather then schools.

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JonF311's avatar

Probably yes-- or at least we need the right people in prison. In the US however (and maybe in the UK too?) most people do not live in high crime areas. The sort of crime they experience is some drug-addled neighborhood kid breaking in their car to steal something. Or maybe a "porch pirate" grabbing a delivery package. They may be panicked by the media about rare or distant crime (think: mass shootings) but tell them their taxes must go up to build more prisons and hire more correctional staff and they will be skeptical.

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Henry Cotton's avatar

This is probably the most sobering thing you've ever written. I couldn't read all of it.

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Ed West's avatar

Sorry! It really is depressing. A couple of people have suggested I write a book about this and my response is ‘no way!’

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Ruairi's avatar

Would you need to " write" 120 pages of copy and paste - would send the message. Put your name on it and give someone else a writing credit

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Demeisen's avatar

From what I understand, England relies heavily on a consent/compliance model, with a lot of surveillance thrown in. Rather than any sort of swift and reliable police or neighbor response.

It has been asserted to me that "oh, sure there are more punch ups but it's not the gun hell you have in the US".

It seems that tolerance for brawls is kind of like the "broken window" theory of crime. Leave alone such lenient sentences for serious violence, coupled with social training to defer to authority.

I fear once it gets beyond a critical mass, it will degrade. When Private security becomes more common, you will know you're second world. Eg as we see inklings of in parts of crime tolerant liberal cities in the US, particularly during the organized political violence of the Floyd riots and lockdowns.

Also, two other points:

There is a real deep societal cost to allowing such terror against women. It both reinforces a deep sense of vulnerability and underlines the common person's helplessness, kind of a "see, I can break any rule and you can't stop me". The West must re awaken to the need to defend its women.

The disdain Europeans express for American firearms freedoms is immense. But, you know what? On balance, it works well in many places. Many people happily trade small risks for the broad and pervasive effect of making predators afraid again.

In terms of the points on US crime rates, it varies a great deal, and you can see easily the effects of different governance and culture. Progressive urban EU-philic cities have high rates of petty crime and little control over violent crime (varies more by population factors). Socially conservative armed areas, even urban, provide lower crime rates, at least for those not actively involved in the criminal trade. A knife-thug facing no resistance in a mid sized British city would find a very different experience quickly.

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JonF311's avatar

Re: Many people happily trade small risks for the broad and pervasive effect of making predators afraid again.

Huh? This sounds like it's coming from an alternate universe. US predators are not "afraid" at all. You are aware that we have a horrible violent crime rate.

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BH99's avatar

The bizarre thing is that any other organisation would face a lawyer lead inquiry as to why its failures lead to the deaths of innocent people on such a regular basis.

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John's avatar

The victims must be made invisible lest their existence calls into question the contradictions within the ideology

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Mike Hind's avatar

This seems to be an idea adopted from the US left. How long before Britain is called a 'carceral state' by posh leftish types.

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Frankenheimer Graff's avatar

Regarding early prison releases; isn’t this the same harebrained idea that Newsom implemented in California? Well, check out how streetlife has improved over there! Why not build new giga-prisons asap? Like any manager Starmer just wants things to run efficiently; if something clogs up the ‘machine’, well they will just tinker with some of the inputs, throughputs and outputs until it is unclogged. Safety for ordinary citizens does not come into the managerial equation as it is outside the machinery of state (i.e. the efficient running of the state-run institutions). It is collateral damage, but since these folks voted for us, they deserve to suffer the consequences. See you in the next election, plebs. Remember the mantra “Protect the NHS” during the UK lockdowns? Same type of thinking; the hospital system must not become “clogged up” therefore we lockdown society; the citizenry’s interests be damned. This type of blinkered thinking is what you get everywhere that true statesmen are replaced by technocratic managers.

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Neil C's avatar

McSweeney was already due to be recalled to Prison before he killed; the police turned up to his home to return him, but he wasn't in so they didn't bother.

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Greg's avatar

I think I see where you are going wrong, Ed. You are labouring under the misapprehension that we have a functioning government, or a functioning state if you prefer. Missiles intended for space that plop into the Briny immediately after launch, the fiasco of Basra and the tragedy of Helmand, ERs that aren’t really that busy but which can’t process patients in a timely fashion, jails that used to accommodate the prison population, but which for some reason now seem to be in high demand - nothing to do with porous borders mind - an unelected PM who lasts a few weeks, to be replaced by another unelected PM, a state pension bill of £110bn a year, and rising, etc etc.

How far will the ship sink? Haiti levels of Mad Max-ery? Don’t think so. Zimbabwe? No again. Jamaica? Possibly. Albania? We might be there already…

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Irena's avatar

EW: "The idea that we are addicted to punishment ignores the fact that many people only go to jail after committing multiple crimes, with two dozen assault convictions or 40 thefts to their name."

Wow.

On the flip side, I remember when my then-roommate's (that's "flatmate" for you Brits; this was back when I lived in the US) got charged with shoplifting. She (the roommate) claimed she "knew" her brother was definitely innocent, and that someone must have put the stuff in his bag. Okay, maybe. Or maybe that was just his sister talking. One way or the other, she said the prosecution asked for a 20-year prison sentence. (This part I actually believe because she was there to hear it herself.) In the end, he got some sort of community service, which seems appropriate for a first offense of that type.

It's really weird just how counterintuitive the the justice system can be. Draconian punishments for minor crimes some of the time, very little punishment for very serious crimes at other times. Yes, I realize I'm comparing two different countries (UK/US), but even within the same country, you can find examples of both.

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Keith's avatar

While we're at it, why don't we release a few hundred American Bully XLs into our towns? Against that? You're addicted to safety.

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John's avatar

Left leaning people very frequently take the view that anyone to the right of them is evil. I don’t think that overstates the point. In contrast, right leaning people tend to see left leaning people as no worse than deluded or daft. Left leaning people want to argue based on morality and feels, with inconvenient victims of their belief system (e.g. of crime or abortion) made to disappear as quickly as female biology. Right leaning people want to argue on the basis of trade offs and outcomes, albeit with little sympathy for and likely some relish towards people who suffer because they refuse to fit in.

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John's avatar

And critically, left wing people believe in their own, often inflated sense of morality sufficiently to present their claims in a way that non engaged people find convincing.

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John's avatar

It is a pitiless world for anyone, however vulnerable, who happens to fall outside the realms of whatever morality play is in vogue with the left from time to time.

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William H Amos's avatar

I wonder if the English model of criminal justice can ever properly function over an extended period without the death penalty.

Was it not was the shadow of the gallows which made room for the self congratulatory Liberalism of the last 150 odd years?

For centuries a permissive and more or less unintrusive civil society, with very few actual prisons, was maintained by a system of over 200 capital crimes.

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JonF311's avatar

Under the old "bloody code" of the 18th century even very minor crimes could be punished with a hanging, including juveniles. Crime rates were still sky high back in the "not-so-good old days".

There's some pretty good research that points to something important: it isn't the severity of the penalty that matters, but rather the certainty of getting caught and the swiftness of the consequences. We need more police (and, OK, maybe more surveillance) and more courts and ways to streamline the system so that malefactors do not go years before being called to account.

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William H Amos's avatar

I have heard that second point asserted all my life and I'd like to examine the 'research' first hand which corroborates it. It has always struck me as an obviously false dichotomy. When discussing deterrence the ''certainty of getting caught" for a crime cannot be arbitrarily severed from the "consequences" which attend upon that crime. - unless you're trying to fiddle the conclusions in advance.

There is also the brute fact that most murders are committed by only a few wicked individuals. 5,300 or so in our prisons at any one time

If murder was a capital crime there would be fewer murderers.

Personally I have very little faith in research standards, even in the natural sciences, these days. When it comes to the 'social sciences' we may as well bring back the augurs - at least they were disinterestedly wrong.

On the other hand I fear I'm one of those incorrigible old eccentrics who, having lived in a number of different lands and experienced many legal codes have found that deterrence, naturally accompanied by vigilance, actually works rather well - when it's tried.

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JonF311's avatar

Where do you see me suggesting there should be no "consequences"? My point is that immediate and certain consequences work much better than distant or uncertain consequences. Anyone who has had a child, a domestic animal, or who has manged workplace staff knows this instinctively. Above I called for more police and a more efficient court system. Why would see that as "soft on crime"?

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William H Amos's avatar

Thank you for taking the trouble to respond.

I dont think I attributed those suggestions to you and I certainly didn't intend to. I'm sorry if it appears from my response that I did.

I think we both agree that apprehension and punishment are, as it were, obviously mutually reinforcing.

There are, however, those apparently far cleverer and better educated than us within tenured Academia who quite openly argue that fear of apprehension alone is enought to discourage law-breaking.

From the Royal College of Policing for instance -

"...the certainty of being caught has a deterrent effect, regardless of the type of punishment that follows."

"the certainty of apprehension, not the severity of the ensuing consequences, is the more effective deterrent"

https://www.college.police.uk/research/what-works-policing-reduce-crime/what-stops-people-offending

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JonF311's avatar

Your apology is certainly accepted, and I'm sorry if I took too hasty umbrage.

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