I know the data points to less crime but there are many things that are clearly worse (at least in London where I live) than the 90’s and I suspect many of those are not showing up in the data (people don’t bother to report them). I remember being shocked at that head teacher being murdered but I suspect people would be less shocked these days. The gang rape by the canal may have made big headlines but a teenage boy was murdered down there last year in broad daylight and his body thrown into the canal. It only made local headlines and certainly no soul searching about what we have become. I watch bike thieves stealing in daylight without a care in the world and shoplifting isn’t even getting challenged. Knife carrying is almost ubiquitous among the kids from the estates and the city seems to be far more dangerous for my teenage son than it was for me in the 90’s.
Perhaps I am just getting old and seeing modern life as rubbish when the evidence points the other way. Or maybe I am just dwelling on the things that affect me and my family and the bigger picture is that London is a safer city than it was in my youth. But it feels like wishful thinking.
My impression is that the outer bits of London have got worse while inner bits safer. That Harlow murder is an example - there was also the murder of a teenage girl in Romford a couple of years back. But as pessimistic as I am the data definitely points towards lower violent crime since the 90s.
Here in Leeds, from my personal experience, there is definitely less crime. I had my car stolen at least 3 times then. Since then, never. Was burgled in the late ‘90s, since then no burglaries. My brother got his nose broken by some teenage thugs while walking out of an off-licence in Headingley in the 1990s. He’s not been assaulted since.
I trust the data more than personal anecdotes, which are prone nostalgia.
I agree data should be the one to trust. But it does come up short against my personal experience in London at least. There was no huge knife problem when I was at school in 80s or 90s. At least one child at my sons's school has been murdered in recent years and knives being discovered in the school is not unheard of. I can think of several boys that have been murdered on the streets in recent years within a mile of where i live.
Probably knife crime being worse for teens is present in the data too and perhaps the decline in things like binge drinking culture where drunken fights frequently break out is reducing violence faster than school kids knifing each other increases it.
So it could be the type of violence that is increasing is more lethal and more difficult for a family to insulate themselves from even though, according to the data, there is less violence per se. And perhaps its that feeling not being able to limit your exposure which makes modern London feel more threatening.
London feels shabbier. So there is a constant beggar, outside the local Lidl and Iceland. There are homeless people sleeping in the morrisons carpark. The Turkish barbers and American candy strores. The begging at crossroads
Aren't we about to hit a demographic sore spot for crime. The children of 00s immigrants
Social media and the smart phone may indeed have reduced crime since the 1990s but at the expense of mental illness and an increasingly Demolition Man like society:
Good article Ed. One of the other benefits of the mobile have been that they, whether you like or not, record where you are and where you've been. Many junior ranks of criminal haven't yet worked this out and so the first thing the police do upon arrest is search for the suspect's phone and, then, upon gaining entry to it use it to link the suspect to the scene and then also use the text messages, pictures etc to incriminate the suspect. All good stuff.
yes I think so. England and Wales homicide rate was about 300 a year in Edwardian period, which even accounting for population is lower than today (plus loads of today's attempted murders would be murder because of medical technology)
There was a story, possibly apocryphal, of peelers in 1908 or so chasing an armed man through Central London. As the police were unarmed, they asked passers-by to lend them their revolvers, of which several were available!
I think there could have been a bit more about the trade-offs. Sure, we can probably eliminate crime completely if we were able to develop a kind of PreCog technology a la Minority Report but celebrating the elimination of crime while you're living in a dystopian nightmare seems beside the point.
I live in New Jersey and many of my friends live in New York City. In New York City, they've set up cameras that film you and, if you're going over the speed limit, mail you a ticket. There's no court appearance and no points, you just pay the fine. My state has, in a rare gesture of restraint, refused to use these traffic cameras, but in NYC people have done everything they can to disable and evade these things. They climb up poles and paint the lenses black. They hit them with hammers. They use traffic apps like Waze to warn people where each camera is located. Eventually, the cost of replacing these cameras will make having them cost ineffective and they'll get rid of them, at least you'd hope. Now, putting aside the obvious observation that New York City has put these cameras in place as an easy way to extract money out of anybody who comes there without increasing police manpower, I'm sure you could argue that a decrease in speeding will lead to a decrease in traffic-related injuries but something tells me that the grassroots campaign to eradicate these surveillance devices tells us something about ourselves as human beings. We know we need laws but we also feel that enforcement is only acceptable when carried out by fallible humans who aren't omnispective. If we come up with a way to use machines that get you every single time you slip up, it quickly becomes dystopian.
Situational crime prevention! Both left and right look at ”root causes" whether that's poverty or no discipline at home, but actually things like locks and cameras make the most difference. There's a really interesting history behind its development. Some hard headed leftwinger in the home office under Thatcher pioneered it. Cut car crime massively by bringing in compulsory car alarms, removing coins from gas metres.
It doesn't fit the prejudices of left or right, but as an approach it is one of the best options we have with crime.
Well…I am certain CCTV on trains etc has had a big effect. It undermines a bogus claim of self-defence and can identify a suspect. Funnily enough, I bought a safe the other day - more of a strongbox really - and had an interesting chat with the owner of the shop, a locksmith. He explained that there is not much now that burglars and robbers can sell on: cash, jewellery, and watches being the things he did list as worth nicking. A lot of electronic stuff is easy to trace, said the man in the shop.
With the more mindless violence, there was loads in the 1970s and 1980s, and it really did die away considerably - down to a hard core of ultra-violent acts: sword rampages, knifing someone for “looking at me in a funny way”, that kinda ting.
Yeah, this is what I've argued above about trade-offs. You want to decrease crime but normal, free human activity requires the same space that crime exploits. You can't use technology to eliminate crime without also infringing so much on normal, free human activity that you stunt and deform social life in the attempt. I mention Minority Report as an example. Who thinks that living in a crime-free society is worth living in a dystopia where your actions can be predicted and punished before you carry them out? Look at your example of Paulie not being able to intimidate the small business owner because the economy is too digital. That's a good thing. But wait, the same digitization of everything that makes the mobster unable to exploit the small businessman also makes it easier for the government to see every dollar that guy makes. So, now certain types of robbery can't take place but other kinds of top-down control become easier.
Well the opposite is true. The Coffee shop owner cannot give money to a local charity -Starbucks charging people for water in 9-11 is a case in the hand. Manager, cannot make any decisions. A lot of modern life, is finding the person who has the authority to help you
Solutionism (good word) doesn’t even work on its own terms because the underlying social/cultural issue ends up just manifesting itself elsewhere. And that’s before one even considers the side effects of the solutions. Mind you, just think how real world crime rates will look once we fully inhabit the virtual world.
Prisons are 'solutionism' but don't seem like it because they've been around so long. I think prisons work, and could work even better if we had more of them.
If we have to wait until humans become nicer, we might be waiting a long time. But while we're waiting, let's have prisons and mobile phones!
Surprisingly (probably because it's a positive angle on phones) this the first I've come across this as a story. It brings to mind other potential benefits of tech in relation to crime. For example, I had 2 CD players nicked from my car in Leeds, 20 years ago. Now we mostly stream from our phones via Bluetooth. And I'm guessing those massive flat screen TVs mounted on people's living room walls are harder to nip in and take.
I know the data points to less crime but there are many things that are clearly worse (at least in London where I live) than the 90’s and I suspect many of those are not showing up in the data (people don’t bother to report them). I remember being shocked at that head teacher being murdered but I suspect people would be less shocked these days. The gang rape by the canal may have made big headlines but a teenage boy was murdered down there last year in broad daylight and his body thrown into the canal. It only made local headlines and certainly no soul searching about what we have become. I watch bike thieves stealing in daylight without a care in the world and shoplifting isn’t even getting challenged. Knife carrying is almost ubiquitous among the kids from the estates and the city seems to be far more dangerous for my teenage son than it was for me in the 90’s.
Perhaps I am just getting old and seeing modern life as rubbish when the evidence points the other way. Or maybe I am just dwelling on the things that affect me and my family and the bigger picture is that London is a safer city than it was in my youth. But it feels like wishful thinking.
My impression is that the outer bits of London have got worse while inner bits safer. That Harlow murder is an example - there was also the murder of a teenage girl in Romford a couple of years back. But as pessimistic as I am the data definitely points towards lower violent crime since the 90s.
Here in Leeds, from my personal experience, there is definitely less crime. I had my car stolen at least 3 times then. Since then, never. Was burgled in the late ‘90s, since then no burglaries. My brother got his nose broken by some teenage thugs while walking out of an off-licence in Headingley in the 1990s. He’s not been assaulted since.
I trust the data more than personal anecdotes, which are prone nostalgia.
I agree data should be the one to trust. But it does come up short against my personal experience in London at least. There was no huge knife problem when I was at school in 80s or 90s. At least one child at my sons's school has been murdered in recent years and knives being discovered in the school is not unheard of. I can think of several boys that have been murdered on the streets in recent years within a mile of where i live.
Probably knife crime being worse for teens is present in the data too and perhaps the decline in things like binge drinking culture where drunken fights frequently break out is reducing violence faster than school kids knifing each other increases it.
So it could be the type of violence that is increasing is more lethal and more difficult for a family to insulate themselves from even though, according to the data, there is less violence per se. And perhaps its that feeling not being able to limit your exposure which makes modern London feel more threatening.
I haven’t looked at the nationwide data for knife crime, but I suspect it is much worse in London than elsewhere.
London feels shabbier. So there is a constant beggar, outside the local Lidl and Iceland. There are homeless people sleeping in the morrisons carpark. The Turkish barbers and American candy strores. The begging at crossroads
Aren't we about to hit a demographic sore spot for crime. The children of 00s immigrants
the shabbiness is deeply depressing, and that does feel worse. again not everywhere - central areas like the South Bank and Kings X are much better.
Oh Kings Cross was shocking in the late 90s -early 00s
Social media and the smart phone may indeed have reduced crime since the 1990s but at the expense of mental illness and an increasingly Demolition Man like society:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5rVQGT01Kzg&pp=ygUkZGVtb2xpdGlvbiBtYW4gc3dlYXJpbmcgdG9pbGV0IHBhcGVy
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n7nFEnFtvCM&pp=ygUkZGVtb2xpdGlvbiBtYW4gc3dlYXJpbmcgdG9pbGV0IHBhcGVy
…’a bunch of Hamas-loving romantically dysfunctional neurotics’….you are a delight to read sir!
thank you!
Very interesting read
Good article Ed. One of the other benefits of the mobile have been that they, whether you like or not, record where you are and where you've been. Many junior ranks of criminal haven't yet worked this out and so the first thing the police do upon arrest is search for the suspect's phone and, then, upon gaining entry to it use it to link the suspect to the scene and then also use the text messages, pictures etc to incriminate the suspect. All good stuff.
Yeah and the horror murders - like of that poor man in Harlow - involve only the absolute thickest criminals who haven’t thought this through.
"we could reduce crime to 1950s levels without re-adopting that era’s moral norms and restraints."
Adopting That Era's norms and restraints would be a problem? How so?
I think it is still higher than 1900 despite better healthcare, CCTV etc.
yes I think so. England and Wales homicide rate was about 300 a year in Edwardian period, which even accounting for population is lower than today (plus loads of today's attempted murders would be murder because of medical technology)
There was a story, possibly apocryphal, of peelers in 1908 or so chasing an armed man through Central London. As the police were unarmed, they asked passers-by to lend them their revolvers, of which several were available!
that story really brings cheer to my heart. I imagine the passers-by singing like they're in Mary Poppins.
Slummy villians - go-balistic- police -response -atrocious
Nope. Sorry.
I think there could have been a bit more about the trade-offs. Sure, we can probably eliminate crime completely if we were able to develop a kind of PreCog technology a la Minority Report but celebrating the elimination of crime while you're living in a dystopian nightmare seems beside the point.
I live in New Jersey and many of my friends live in New York City. In New York City, they've set up cameras that film you and, if you're going over the speed limit, mail you a ticket. There's no court appearance and no points, you just pay the fine. My state has, in a rare gesture of restraint, refused to use these traffic cameras, but in NYC people have done everything they can to disable and evade these things. They climb up poles and paint the lenses black. They hit them with hammers. They use traffic apps like Waze to warn people where each camera is located. Eventually, the cost of replacing these cameras will make having them cost ineffective and they'll get rid of them, at least you'd hope. Now, putting aside the obvious observation that New York City has put these cameras in place as an easy way to extract money out of anybody who comes there without increasing police manpower, I'm sure you could argue that a decrease in speeding will lead to a decrease in traffic-related injuries but something tells me that the grassroots campaign to eradicate these surveillance devices tells us something about ourselves as human beings. We know we need laws but we also feel that enforcement is only acceptable when carried out by fallible humans who aren't omnispective. If we come up with a way to use machines that get you every single time you slip up, it quickly becomes dystopian.
Situational crime prevention! Both left and right look at ”root causes" whether that's poverty or no discipline at home, but actually things like locks and cameras make the most difference. There's a really interesting history behind its development. Some hard headed leftwinger in the home office under Thatcher pioneered it. Cut car crime massively by bringing in compulsory car alarms, removing coins from gas metres.
It doesn't fit the prejudices of left or right, but as an approach it is one of the best options we have with crime.
I made a video about it
https://youtu.be/27pX6UvI9U4?si=Ds0idfQK2fZg77pV
Well…I am certain CCTV on trains etc has had a big effect. It undermines a bogus claim of self-defence and can identify a suspect. Funnily enough, I bought a safe the other day - more of a strongbox really - and had an interesting chat with the owner of the shop, a locksmith. He explained that there is not much now that burglars and robbers can sell on: cash, jewellery, and watches being the things he did list as worth nicking. A lot of electronic stuff is easy to trace, said the man in the shop.
With the more mindless violence, there was loads in the 1970s and 1980s, and it really did die away considerably - down to a hard core of ultra-violent acts: sword rampages, knifing someone for “looking at me in a funny way”, that kinda ting.
reminds me of the bit in the Sopranos where Paulie can't intimidate the small businessman because the economy is too digital.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/magazine/sopranos.html
almost feels sad in a way, although obviously good.
Yeah, this is what I've argued above about trade-offs. You want to decrease crime but normal, free human activity requires the same space that crime exploits. You can't use technology to eliminate crime without also infringing so much on normal, free human activity that you stunt and deform social life in the attempt. I mention Minority Report as an example. Who thinks that living in a crime-free society is worth living in a dystopia where your actions can be predicted and punished before you carry them out? Look at your example of Paulie not being able to intimidate the small business owner because the economy is too digital. That's a good thing. But wait, the same digitization of everything that makes the mobster unable to exploit the small businessman also makes it easier for the government to see every dollar that guy makes. So, now certain types of robbery can't take place but other kinds of top-down control become easier.
Well the opposite is true. The Coffee shop owner cannot give money to a local charity -Starbucks charging people for water in 9-11 is a case in the hand. Manager, cannot make any decisions. A lot of modern life, is finding the person who has the authority to help you
Solutionism (good word) doesn’t even work on its own terms because the underlying social/cultural issue ends up just manifesting itself elsewhere. And that’s before one even considers the side effects of the solutions. Mind you, just think how real world crime rates will look once we fully inhabit the virtual world.
Prisons are 'solutionism' but don't seem like it because they've been around so long. I think prisons work, and could work even better if we had more of them.
If we have to wait until humans become nicer, we might be waiting a long time. But while we're waiting, let's have prisons and mobile phones!
Surprisingly (probably because it's a positive angle on phones) this the first I've come across this as a story. It brings to mind other potential benefits of tech in relation to crime. For example, I had 2 CD players nicked from my car in Leeds, 20 years ago. Now we mostly stream from our phones via Bluetooth. And I'm guessing those massive flat screen TVs mounted on people's living room walls are harder to nip in and take.
Wow, I usually feel worse after reading your articles but this time I feel better. Maybe I misunderstood it.
We can't believe any statistics produced by the modern state.
The notion that kids don't offend because they're buried in their phones all day assumes Westernized kids, not their migrant counterparts.