Tuesday 27 April 2010
Is Britain a more violent place than it was 10 years ago?
The Today programme on Radio 4 hosted an interesting conversation on responses to violent crime today. Rod Morgan, former Youth Justice Board Chair and Professor at the University of Bristol, and Chris Grayling, Shadow Home Secretary participated in the conversation. The Guardian has also done a series of articles investigating the extent to which we can understand the measure of crime, including this one by Alan Travis. As the election approaches, it is interesting to see the extent to which these numbers are understood and interpreted.
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I thought Chris Grayling was given a run for his money on the Today Programme this morning which was good to hear- his churning out of anecdotes of running knife battles on the streets of London which "just didn't happen 10 years ago" made me laugh out loud and the interviewer's response was suitably terse.
Crime has taken a backseat in this election so far which, in my opinion, is probably positive because it means we are less likely to see the bidding wars and subsequent increased punitiveness which followed other elections which were won on the law and order ticket (1979 and 1997). It'll be interesting to see if today's reported focus on crime (and family) policy raises its profile http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8645508.stm). If political parties were capable of having a serious debate about crime, then I'd be up for a raising of the profile but, as it is, I'd prefer it to stay on sidelines.
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