Crime and violence
Participants expressed a feeling that Britain is more dangerous and violent than it used to be.
As well as identifying violence and other kinds of crime as social evils, they highlighted fear of crime and violence as another important dimension. People expressed anxieties about the perceived prevalence of violence, aggression and crime and a sense of unease about what might happen.
People resort to violence for what seems like fairly trivial provocation.
Connections were made between drug use, gangs and crime, which participants in the unheard groups could sometimes talk about from personal experience. Drug addiction was also connected to prostitution and the sexual exploitation of young girls.
Child abuse, exploitation and violence against women were cited as specific crimes that were social evils. There was a consensus that these were absolute ‘wrongs’ in the research with unheard groups and so they were discussed less than some of the more contentious social issues.
Some comments from the consultation
“Crime and fear of crime. People should feel free and relaxed to get on with their lives. But far too many live in fear of someone committing a crime against them.”
“The UK has turned into a violent society.”
“Crime - this affects everyone regardless of race, class etc. The media hype it up but people don’t feel safe in their homes or on the streets. Most people have personal experience or know people who have been affected. It affects how we live our lives on a day to day basis - where we go, how we get there, what type of car we have and where we park it.”
on April 20th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I’m a teenager who lives at the streets of southall. i have been through the crime and seen allot of kids that are my age that getting time to go out by the police and the time to come in. most people are scared to come out these days just because of young boys mugging other people for no reason or to show off or maybe as well to make a little amount of money.
Abusive? Inappropriate? Report this comment.i my self i have been arrested but i wound say what i got arrested for but it totally messed up for me.
everyday there community police supported are on the streets top keep down the crime. this social behavior is not going to end that what i have to say.
on April 21st, 2008 at 5:03 pm
It is sad to see only one comment on crime and violence. Society has now accepted violence as the norm, no one is shocked by this anymore. When violent acts take place we turn and look the other way through fear or indifference. What a shower of hypocrites we are, when someone is murdered we lay flowers at the scene to salve our conscience’s. There is only one way to tackle the problem and that is a complete change in the attitude of society, better parental control, the teaching of good citizenship in our schools, better policing on the streets, life to mean life for acts of murder through greed or killing for killings sake, and other acts of violence to be punished by much longer sentences, and here the courts have to play their part!. It sickens me to see in the paper or TV violent thugs laughing at the appallingly lenient sentences while the victims of the murdered person can only look on in despair knowing that justice has not been done! The police also need to take a good hard look at how they handle the honest members of the public, I have come across incidents where the victim is treated as the criminal!. A friend of mine was having eggs and other stuff thrown at his windows and he did call the police and while he waited for them to show the neds continued to throw things at the windows. He was so upset that he swore at the little neds, by this time the police had arrived and they threatened to charge him for breach of the peace! They did nothing about the neds! My friend used to have respect for the police but now will have nothing to do with them. I know that police work can be a very thankless job but if they go on the way they are going just now they will lose any goodwill and support they once had. They say they want the public’s help, they have a funny way of showing it!. The attacks on firefighters, ambulance crews and hospital staff is completely unacceptable, the neds who do this are putting their own lives and that of their families at risk as well as members of their communities for which they have complete contempt!. Our police in Scotland have been paid the wage upfront and backdated by our Scottish Parliament, unlike England they profess to be servants of the people, let them prove this by being more conspicuous more approachable and more courteous. To give them their due they have done well in removing a lot of drugs and weapons from our streets and they are trying successful initiatives to get the young off the streets and away from crime and I commend them for this. But I would recommend that they follow the motto of the New York Police Dept which is: “Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect”.
Abusive? Inappropriate? Report this comment.on April 23rd, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Stop making/showing violent films and t.v. programmes. Many people, especially youngsters, are influenced by them. We have a law that says children cannot be punished by parents for bad behaviour and yet they see far worse in films and on t.v.
Abusive? Inappropriate? Report this comment.on April 26th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
The rise in crime has its roots in the absurd culture of “political correctnes” its supporters speak of crimanals human rights and social rights! anyone convicted of crimes against society and against humanity forfiet those rights. the accepted punishment for crime is imprisonment the withdrawal of the right to freedom. So called politacl correctness is no more than the denial of plain speach. Not long ago a picture of an elderly woman was published with her face beaten to a pulp whoever comitteded that crime deserved a flogging themselves it would teach them what it feels like to be helpless to protect themselves from violence. When police forces were formed the deal was that public protection was left in their hands their current falure is why so many carry weapons. It is time the birch was brought back to punish violent crime it would free up a few places in overcroweded prisons.
Abusive? Inappropriate? Report this comment.on May 6th, 2008 at 10:45 am
JOSEPH ROWNTREE – ERIC BERNE
Joseph Rowntree called upon us all to seek out the fundamental causes of weakness and evil in society.
Eric Berne gave us a succinct view of self-and-others; the tool required to achieve the above aim.
I would assert that (whether evil comes from social incompetence or – if such is your view - from letting the Devil in) its root cause IS weakness; the weakness of the individual.
In Berne’s terms, weakness amounts to an under-developed Adult ego state* in the psyche; a condition I see as pertaining all over the planet. The two terrible truths of society, are: (1) individual weakness is increasing, and (2) the overcompensating-weak, rise to positions of power. Consequently, any corrective effort must reach out directly to the very young as the Powers That Be are, instinctively, fearful of general empowerment.
I have synthesised an approach. It can be found www.barriesingleton.co.uk as outlined in 1995 to Rowntree. Click on “Visionary Stuff”.
Only wisdom empowers; cleverness is inclined to enslave. Development of a strong Adult ego state engenders wisdom and is vital to individual, family, group, state and world stability. Adult strength is the ultimate answer to every weakness and evil.
* Transactional Analysis http://changingminds.org/explanations/behaviors/ta.htm
Abusive? Inappropriate? Report this comment.on May 6th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
The whole of the establishment are the problem in this Country for the simply reason that they all work for the Government and receive a bonus and some with honours, and I have dealt with them all, right up to the IPCC and not a single one investigates any bodies problems at all. Indeed, it doesn’t matter what evidence what one supplies these institutions the result always ends up the same, with shameful lies “We have thoroughly investigated the matter and found nothing wrong” The Police use all the dirtyies tactics every imaginable knowing that there are in built time limits
Abusive? Inappropriate? Report this comment.all unknown to the layman/woman. They deliberately fiddle the crime figures, by using a Misc No 234 or/ what ever number. The IPCC had an ex Police Officer on it’s board next to the Chief Constable of Cheshire Constabulary which only came to light when he was found guilty on 26 charges of harrasing his neighbours in Warrington.All three Ombudsmen in England are all Ex Chief Executives of Councils. The only time the Police act is when there is a murder which they are compelled by Law. Finish up like a cabbage and it only receives local publicity, and even child abusers are allowed their freedom in the County / or out of it.Raymond Ashley VICTIM of 27 years. 100% character.
on May 6th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
The whole of the complaints system should be dismantled and brought out into the open with a body of people who are totally Independant of the Government / or Religion, and set up into regions across the Country, whom the layman/woman could turn to with their evidence and if they qualify for Legal Aid it should automatically be granted to take on those that have badly let them down,particularly because these people are immune from prosecution, and that’s why they are getting away with it. Trying to find a Lawyer in this once great British County to take them on, simply beggars belief,
Abusive? Inappropriate? Report this comment.and I have sent hundreds of email’s out all over the Country and only Chambers in Doherty Street London responded and advised me to obtain a Solicitor and that they would be willing to speak to with a view of putting it before Counsel,
sadly if you haven’t fallen of the pavement slip trip /or car accident they are not interested.Without question one needs to be a criminal, child abuser, drug pusher or the like to get on in this Country and that’s why the tradesmen have left in droves leaving all the DIY merchants, and so who on earths going to learn them skills. As a time served Ex Master bricklayer practically skilled all trades now retired I can guarantee that if the youngsters of today do not take on an apprenticeship at the age of 15, working along side a first class tradesman then forget it.I would also smack these bird brained architects who have destroyed the building trade with their wooden houses that are guaranteed to burn to the ground, and the tin sheds they call supermarkets, which blow over in the storms, and bring back the 13ft ceilings in flood planes, with three steps at the front door, and brick up the shore lines in water bond. I would also take away the National Lottery money from this Government who are falsely claiming that they have got Unemployment down when it’s the British people who have done it them selves and it will continue.The lists endless. Raymond Ashley
on May 7th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Crime and violence are a route of choice for many people today. They choose them not because they can’t put bread on the family table but because they want a Rolex or want an i-Pod.
Our language for crime and criminal behaviour smacks still of the early twentieth century. We assume that ‘victims’ can be perpetrators and that there is an excuse for their violence based on prejudice, alienation and poverty. I want to suggest that perpetrators are rarely ‘victims’ - that is, reasoned and premeditated perpetrators. The culture of the ‘court report’ - in which the life circumstances of the perpetrator are set against the crime and ‘cancel out’ or ‘explain’ part of it - is a very quaint notion, and assumes that criminals form, or come from, a class of the dispossessed in much the way that characters in Arthur Morrison’s Child of the Jago do.
Life is not like that. We are no longer seeing assaults and criminal violence as exclusively the work of some Dickensian underclass - and even if it were, their circumstances could barely be an excuse.
We have to engage with the simple notion that what you do is your responsibility - even if you are on drugs. In Lynn Truss’s words ‘The beer made me do it’ is simply a ridiculous statement in mitigation. Your choice to offer violence to take my Rolex (incidentally, I don’t have one unlike the bling-encrusted street thugs) is entirely yours. Nothing ‘makes you’ knife me for the watch.
We need to abolish the social and other excuses for personal decisions in most circumstances. We need to take away the excuses, the mitigation claims, the whole language of equality of ‘victimhood’ between the victim of crime and its perpetrator.
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