A Crackdown on Crackdowns

Does any normal human being use the word ‘crackdown’ ? Yet politicians, and their all-too-willing patsies in the media, love to do so. Every few days we seem to have a ‘crackdown’ on hate preachers, lager louts, deadbeat dads, welfare cheats, illegal immigrants and bad teachers. The more crackdowns we have on these things, of course, the more they remain exactly the same . I’ll explain why later.

 

For the proper definition of the word ‘crackdown’  is:  ‘well-publicised attempt to appear to do something about a matter of public concern, while in fact doing nothing at all’.  Or, as a Mr A. Blair once memorably described it  ’an eye-catching initiative with which I can be personally associated’ (see ‘Marching Thugs to Cashpoints’). Some have called this method of government ‘manipulative populism’, where the state does what it wants in private but conducts (though the media) an endless series of noisy cartoon battles with cartoon dragons, to persuade the voters that the liberal state has their best interests at heart. It doesn’t, of course.

 

Something similar, I might add, can be said about almost all government announcements concerning victims and their treatment.

 

The announcers at Paddington Station ceaselessly urge me,  ‘Do not become a victim of crime’, soon after telling me that various sorts of criminals apparently ‘operate’ in the area. Well, if they ‘operate’,  then why don’t the police ‘operate’ in such a way that these ‘operators’ are prevented or deterred from operating? (For answer, see below).

 

Vigilant as I may be, if someone comes up to me with a knife (this presumably comes under the heading of ‘operating’) and earnestly requests my wallet, the chances are I’ll become a victim of crime, and the consequences for the criminal will be a lot less important to me than the effects on my life. I don’t want to be sympathetically treated by police victim support officers, or given a cup of coffee while I wait to give evidence, or told the (invariably ludicrous) outcome of the criminal process. I have so little faith in the Criminal Justice system that I am not beguiled by the chance to complain if my case is not pursued by the authorities. I know that the authorities don’t in general believe either in crime or in punishment, and only maintain this street theatre to fool the mob into believing that there is, after all, some justice.  Real punishment is reserved only for those whose crimes are too huge and too blatant to ignore, or for those who upset the establishment in some important way.

 

 I just don’t want to be a victim in the first place, and if the state can’t prevent me from becoming a victim, then I suggest we get a new state.

 

These thoughts are stimulated by two stories circulating this morning . One, there’s said to be a ‘crackdown’ planned on bad driving on Motorways. How very funny. Who is to do the cracking? I drive as little as possible these days, but one thing is quite clear when I do, and it is that the old police patrols that used to be visible on all roads have almost entirely vanished. As in all other areas of policing, the police respond to events after they have taken place, when all they can do is festoon the place with tape, flash their pretty lights and close roads for hours on end. 

 

Partly because of this, and also partly because of increasingly unrestrained drunkenness and drug-taking, and because of a general decline in civility, driving has become more irresponsible and aggressive. If you are unprotected by a steel box on the roads, as cyclists and pedestrians are, you notice this decline in civility and consideration much more than you if you are inside such a box. Almost daily, I see acts verging on clinical insanity committed by drivers who do not think they are doing anything wrong, and to whom nothing will happen until one day they do kill someone (and even then, what happens to them will not be nearly severe enough).  By the way, I don’t exempt my fellow-cyclists from this.

 

The number of cyclists who moronically overtake other cyclists on the inside grows daily, and the alert rider must now behave as if this is bound to happen, before he makes any manoeuvre. I’m sure this is only encouraged by the total police failure to ‘crack down’ on cyclists who ride through red traffic lights, which has convinced many aggressive cyclists that they are subject to no rules at all, a mental condition made worse by the belief among many of them that their green purity makes them virtuous, and cancels out their sins.

 

And then we are told by Keir Starmer, our chiselled and telegenic Director of Public Prosecutions, that the Crown Prosecution Service is to provide a ‘Victims' Right of Review’ (VRR) for crime victims dissatisfied with CPS decisions on dealing with those who have (allegedly) trespassed against them. I sought and swiftly found the flaw in this offer, which was made much of by the BBC this morning.

 

Victims can *ask* the CPS to look again at a case where they think the wrong decision has been taken. But if the CPS think there’s not enough evidence( and under current rules a full-colour 3D record of the crime being committed might just be enough, but not necessarily, especially if the authorities aren't very interested in that sort of crime) then that’s that. Likewise if the Police have already decided to do nothing (their favourite activity when faced with what they regard as ‘minor crime’ or disorder) and so haven’t even sent a file to the CPS. It is, in short, a tiny sop of no great value, and it misses the point that crime and disorder have now reached such levels in our society that the only option is to redefine crime and disorder as non-crime and non-events, and ignore them. Hence the ludicrous claims that crime is falling. We’ve simply redefined it, so that things which were crimes aren’t considered criminal any more and can be ignored by the law and the state, however much you or I might hate them.

 

It’s not as if all crimes ever were prosecuted. Justice has always been a bit of a confidence trick.  But a lot more was done to deter them, from preventive patrols to exemplary sentences, the two features of our system which have been utterly abolished.

 

This, in my view, is part of the social and cultural revolution. Preventive patrolling only works if we all agree about what we disapprove of, and if the police officer shares our view, and intervenes on our behalf (or is expected to do so when he sees certain things going on). Punishment only works if we have a set idea of what is wrong and agree that wrongdoing should be punished, and attributed to the individual who perpetrates it.  Meanwhile, widespread and unrestrained drug-taking and drunkenness(widely excused, once again, as in some way pitiable rather than wrong),  blur the boundaries of responsibility

 

So that consensus has been destroyed.  The police themselves have been taken over by post-Christian social theorists, who excuse most wrongdoing as a social malaise. And much of the public have now been successfully indoctrinated into the same belief. Those who haven't have to be fooled by the illusion of action.

 

The trouble is that , even the liberal section of the public don’t like the consequences of the policy. Even rich liberals dislike it, when it affects them personally. But they cannot address its true cause, which is the post-Christian, responsibility-free self-centred hedonism which they support and which is now our national belief system.

 

So they have crackdowns, and are vaguely surprised when they don’t work. A while later, they have another crackdown. Or they improve facilities for the (growing number of ) victims who result from the policy.

 

And so it will go on until they have run out of crackdowns, and instead we have the crack-up. It is coming.