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policing does little to address why crime manifests in poor neighbourhoods (at lower rates than richer communities, drug use, antisocial, labour and financial crimes are not policed in sw1!), but does lead to the harrassment of the population by police in poor and marginalised neighbourhoods.
i for one am less peturbed by the noisy moped, or the addict on my steps struggaling as a threat to me or my estate, than i am the privatisation of public space and my stagnating wages causing greater desperation in my community which might manifest or be construed as anti social behaviour or crime. the only people who benifit from this style of speech are white gentrifiers and landlords as they do not recieve the same overpolicing of their bodies in the community, or are not active in the communuty when reporting the crime of lowering property values.
if this speech was truly to address why these people recieve this asymetrical policing, it would speak and more to the point, make promises on how they're going to address the structural racism and discrimination within the police force; how power is applied asymetrically, how capital often escapes policing and drives those under it into criminalised activity, rather than simply expand the resources the police have to enact it. it does none of this, it ignores the voices of those most marginalised, pinned between the violence of state and capital
your comment is naieve and othering, an example of when we think of policing we think of the protection of capital depending on our proximity to it or asperations of it, than we do of its effect on people at the whims of it on either side of legality.
broken windows theory is just as useless today as it was in 1982
Maj-
(deleted comment re: NYC and broken windows)
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i for one am less peturbed by the noisy moped, or the addict on my steps struggaling as a threat to me or my estate
Interesting you raise that. I live in an ex council block in Leyton and when I first moved in a gang of heroin addicts made our space their base of operations. They left needles everywhere, intimidated residents; one five year old girl witnessed them shooting up, and their mum got abused for asking them to leave. They burgled one of our elderly blind residents, and tried robbing the rest of us too. They nicked stuff from the local area and stashed it in our estate. They harassed the women on the estate. They shat in public and they set fires. They scared people.
Perhaps you genuinely are someone who would find that sort of thing less troubling than the 'privatisation of public space' - though I'd suggest that if you'd experienced it yourself, or through those you loved most in the world, you might revisit that opinion. You're of course entitled to it as is. But it suggests your experience of such things is entirely academic.
Longer term, it is of course a better strategy to eradicate crime not by punishing bad behaviour but rewarding good behaviour. But when you suggest that as the only approach, you effectively de-centre the victims. It's probably true to say that a rapist would benefit more from psychotherapy than prison, in terms of reducing crime; but his victims deserve justice too. Punishment and rehabilitation are both necessary for justice, but punishment is more important to a victim.
It's not the behaviour of a 'white gentrifier' or a 'landlord' or someone who 'isn't active in the local community' to want crime tackled. The young working class immigrant families in my block wanted the issue resolved even more than I did. And until Labour can say without shame that we are in favour of tackling crime and antisocial behaviour, we will be - rightly - excluded from government. This is something ordinary people care about. They are not insulated from it in the way that many who talk about the solely public health approach to crime are.
mashton
ReekBlefs
Feels like the opposite to me. It seemed to me to be firmly aimed at those people who live in violent, rundown, crime-ridden areas, and feel - correctly - as though the govt doesn't give a monkeys about them:
In his speech, Starmer said it was “working people who pay the heaviest price” when antisocial behaviour was rife and there was complacency from the government because “their kids don’t go to the same schools, nobody fly-tips on their streets. The threat of violence doesn’t stalk their communities.”
I'm lucky enough to live in quite a nice area now (Leyton) but I grew up in Dagenham, and as a teenager I felt what it was like to grow up where random and severe violence were a daily risk. And I became what they call 'hypervigilant', where you're so on edge for risk that it takes over your life. Of course I didn't know it then, we just thought it was being streetwise. But that's what it was.
And I always wondered, when I went out with middle class people, how they managed to treat the city like a playground rather than an assault course. And that's why. Because they grew up somewhere they didn't have to be ready to fight at a moment's notice.
And back in the days that was a weird experience. But now it's much more common for working people.
The Tories have no idea how bad things are. Starmer is right to highlight it.