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Politicians’ answers to our ‘broken’ society leave us in a fix
IT is usually best if politicians and the police take a deep breath before rushing into soundbite solutions to crime-centred problems, all too often driven by a climate of fear generated by the tabloids.
Undeniably, society is beset with problems but is it “broken” as suggested by the Tory leader David Cameron?
If it is cannot the ills be traced back to the early 1980s and Thatcherite policies, continued by New Labour?
The new London mayor, Boris Johnson, rushed into a typical quick-fix reaction to crime. He wants to start with zero-tolerance by banning drinking on the Tubes and in buses.
But who will enforce it? The police? And has that been costed?
Probably not. Surely, the mayor isn’t relying on the militant Tube unions to enforce it?
But it sounded good at the time as an election promise.
Similarly, the Met police, possibly pressurised by the new administration at City Hall, appears to have drawn up an ill-thought out blueprint to tackle what they see as growing knife crime in the capital.
Let’s put up airport-style metal detectors at schools in Camden – that was someone’s bright idea.
But, again, was that suggestion thoroughly tested in debate?
Is it seriously being proposed in the long term that such detector gates be installed at all secondary schools in the borough?
Would they be put up at every entrance to a school bearing in mind that each school has more than one entrance? Wouldn’t they have to be manned, presumably by teachers?
Would we see queues of children outside schools waiting to go through the detectors, and also ready to be frisked by teachers?
Someone somewhere in the higher echelons of the police and City Hall has a dystopian vision of school life in the future.
Thankfully, common sense has been applied by those who have a sound knowledge of life at our schools – the headteachers.
Statistics do not suggest knife crime at schools in Camden has reached a particularly worrying level.
In general crime reflects tensions in society. Only realistic political solutions will reduce crime, especially among youngsters.
Better to budget for more youth centres than detector gates.
However, for years politicians, of all the main parties, have had a blind spot towards youngsters.
Sports pitches have been sold off. Youth centres closed down.
If the proposal by the police succeeds in starting a debate about the provision of facilities for youngsters, it may have served a useful purpose.
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