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February 4, 2011

Criminal Justice ala Scotland



Some nations apparently have abandoned the notion that citizens need to be protected from criminals. Scotland is one of them.

Anger as serial offenders are only sent to prison after clocking up 40 crimes

CRIMINALS in Scotland were allowed to run up as many as 40 convictions last year before eventually being jailed, new figures have revealed.

Hundreds of people sentenced to prison for the first time in 2009-10 already had ten, 20, or even 30 convictions to their name.

Over the course of the past few years, two offenders had committed more than 50 crimes before being sent to jail.

[...] Groups that campaign in support of victims expressed surprise that criminals had been allowed to commit up to 40 offences before being jailed.

A spokesman for Victim Support Scotland said: "Clearly, it comes as a surprise to us that, prior to being sentenced to imprisonment, many offenders had more than 20 previous convictions and some had up to 40.

"We can only assume that the crimes which they committed were extremely low level."

A spokesman for Sacro - Safeguarding Communities - Reducing Offending - said: "Claims that some first-time prisoners have a record of up to 40 previous convictions show how important it is to intervene early and intervene effectively to tackle the root causes of offending

The Brits have made a shambles of their crime reporting system. Crime has not been reduced! In 2005 Scotland was labeled by the United Nations (of all things!) as the most violent western nation.

The study, based on telephone interviews conducted between 1991 and 2000, said 3% of people in Scotland had suffered an assault, while the figure for England and Wales was second highest at 2.8%.

Both Australia and New Zealand had the next highest proportion of assaults among their population at 2.4%, exactly double the level reported for the United States.

Back in the early nineties I was examining the crime rates of New York City versus upstate New York cities. At that time, 75% of all felonies in the State occurred in NYC. That number has dropped dramatically (see page 6 of this report).
The counties outside New York City now account for 58% of the reported crime statewide, as compared to 38% in 1990.
One of the strategies that the NYPD adopted was to take a zero tolerance approach to minor offenses. An attitude of lawlessness permeates a society when petty criminals are emboldened by lax law enforcement standards. Citizens do not bother reporting crimes because there is an expectation that authorities will do nothing about it.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where public safety augers itself into the ground; in a permissive environment, criminals become more active, more crimes are committed and less crimes are reported.

14 comments:

sig94 said...

Rhod - the UK is setting itself up for Sharia Law - people will get desperate so that something, anything, might be done to criminals. People thirst for justice just like they thirst for water.

sig94 said...

Dean0 - it's the same way here if the offender is a juvenile.

sig94 said...

Gorges - victims who refuse to be victims are prosecuted severely in the UK. I don't think that will happen.

Quite Rightly said...

The main reason that crime fell in New York City while simultaneously rising in Upstate New York is that, when the NYPD took their zero tolerance approach to minor offenses under Rudy Giuliani, a large number of career criminals, mainly in the illegal drug trade, left NYC and headed Upstate to smaller cities and towns where the police and citizenry had almost no experience dealing with a culture of hardened urban criminals.

Now law-abiding citizens in many of New York's smaller cities have no expectation that authorities will do anything about crime.

Anonymous said...

Rhod is correct. Scotland is on suicide watch. They lead the UK (unbelievably) in politically correct weeniosity.

sig94 said...

QR - Not quite so. The murder of Off. Ed Byrne stirred up a cop hornets nest in the NYPD back in 1988 and brought tremendous pressure on drug dealers. Couple this with the spread of crack cocaine and the use of juveniles as delivery boys and there was a mess. I worked narcotics for a while in 1984 and in 1987 was moved into crime analysis. Traffickers overhead costs was also lower upstate as they could rent a house for three months and move before the cops even knew they were there. Prior to crack we arrested about 600 people a year on narcotices charges. Ten years after crack we locked up over 2,000.

"Now law-abiding citizens in many of New York's smaller cities have no expectation that authorities will do anything about crime."

You really don't know what was going on. It depends on the jurisdiction, the judges and the minority population who put a great deal of pressure on the judiciary to soft pedal minor offenses. Couple that with the budget crisis and the move to reduce not only prison populations but also those persons in local lock ups who cannot make bail or get approval for pre-trial release. We deal with community action groups all the time and they'd love to hear you say that to them.

The Upstate urban cops got a real quick education in NYC style drug trafficking in the late 80's. And it wasn't just NYC. The Akwesasne Indians, Viet Namese, Canadian hydroponic weed smugglers, international drug smuggling on the St. Lawrence River and the Dominicans and the Jamaicans kept us busy for awhile also.

There's a lot more that was going on and still is active than you ever thought. We have enough home grown idiots to keep us busy.

Anonymous said...

To borrow a quote
Baretta: Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

Quite Rightly said...

Sig - Thanks for the info.

No offense intended. I'm sure you did a great job. But we were in different parts of New York.

I've got the perspective of a refugee from an ultra-liberal Upstate small-scale jurisdiction that the gun-toting juveniles from NYC moved into during the crack epidemic, bringing with them a whole new level of crime. The traffickers who moved into our area--they called it "Mayberry"-- didn't just stay for a few months--they stayed, period, armed and dangerous, and no amount of "community action" could get any authorities to make them budge. Some of those authorities did tell the law-abiding to leave. Which they did.

Revolving door judges, minority "leaders" pressuring the police department, parole officers who pointedly worked for the parolees, landlords making a bundle on properties they no longer had to maintain, school system putting on very public blinders to tell parents in denial what they wanted to hear, child protection services looking the other way, city officials making grant-money bucks off the new "problem," newspaper preserving the "safe, wholesome city" mask, a progressive population united behind the notion that "It's a national problem, nothing can be done." Etc.

I know more than I want to know, I can you that.

Rhod said...

The Scots are intoxicated by their own BS and etnic flummery. I come from a family littered with them.

sig94 said...

QR - it changed from local to local. The larger cities were hit the hardest. I speak from an urban viewpoint; we had our "issues" with the suburban PD's surrounding us as it literally took years and a few dead bodies before the towns and villages woke up. I remember speaking at a small town meeting where I was booed down by the audience who just did not want to know that their seemingly peaceful burg was a rats nest. The local police chief was absolutely clueless.

Please be patient with me. I get a little pissy because I had a cop buddy working undercover murdered by a 19 yr old dealer from the Bronx. The POS is doing life in a fed pen now, should have been hung.

Rhod said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Quite Rightly said...

@sig - Patience not necessary. You lost a friend. I lost a home. Both of us have had to endure watching many innocent children lose their futures to the poisons called illegal drugs. There's no chance that I'll ever be anything but "pissy" about that. I'm just glad you're one of the good guys. Thanks.

Gorges Smythe said...

That's why they have to keep their mouths shut, Sig!

sig94 said...

Gorges - isn't that a shame though? You guys really need a 2nd Amendment. The cops over there sound like they are employed by the crooks. Politicians not withstanding of course.

I met a London bobbie who was in the States visting relativess back in the 70's. He did a civilian ride along with us in our high crime unit. Nice guy - many of the same view points as us. He was a stitch - that dry Brit sense of humor.