http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,577878,00.html
Crimewatch presenter attacks 'stupid' police

Amelia Hill
Sunday October 21, 2001
The Observer

Nick Ross, the high-profile presenter of the BBC's Crimewatch programme, has launched a bitter attack on the Government's crime policies, accusing Ministers of ignoring victims in favour of criminals.

In an outspoken interview with The Observer, he describes government claims to be tough on crime as 'meaningless garbage' and said that police attempts to prevent crime were 'stupid and unintelligent'.

The 53-year-old presenter said police forces were incapable of carrying out elementary tasks that would enable officials to build up a picture of crime in Britain and that they did not keep meaningful statistical data.

He said: 'We are deeply anti-intelligent in the way we deal with crime in this country. We respond with kneejerk reactions: we don't have a war against crime - we have isolated skirmishes.

'Can you imagine any major international organisation trying to overhaul itself without a great strategy? Of course not. But where is our great strategy with crime? It's all rhetoric. "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime"? - it's meaningless garbage.'

Even Crimewatch , Ross's own television programme, which has helped solve high-profile cases in recent years, is nothing more than a distraction from the fundamentals, he said.

'It's part of the approach in this country where we try to close the door after the crime has taken place. The entire discussion about crime reduction is flawed because, whenever anyone in power talks about solving crime, what they actually mean is dealing with its aftermath.'

Ross has become increasingly frustrated over the Government's attitude to crime reduction during the years he has been the figurehead of Crimewatch, the programme launched in 1984 as an off-the-cuff experiment by the BBC that has become a vital police resource.

'It requires a whole chain of peo ple, circumstances and events for a crime to take place,' he said. 'It's just stupid and unintelligent if the only one of those you paint red and throw resources at is the offender, who is the hardest link in the chain to break.'

According to the British Crime Survey, the volume of recorded offences is going down, although detailed recorded crime figures showed last year a rise in violent crime for the third year in a row.

Justifying recent reports that the public's faith in the police is at rock bottom, the survey found that the overall detection rate for all recorded crime has fallen to an all-time low of 24 per cent, with the perpetrators of violent crime now being found in only 55 per cent of cases, while the
clear-up rate for robbery has fallen to 18 per cent and the detection rate for burglaries is 12 per cent.

Although Home Secretary David Blunkett's office has refused to confirm that a meeting between the two men has been arranged, Ross has cast doubt on Blunkett's ability to turn the tide.

'It would take an incredibly courageous Home Secretary to say this Government is going to achieve specific targets when the electorate has no expectation that the Government could ever achieve that,' he said.

'Most politicians just don't get it. But it's really not rocket science - it just takes someone with imagination and balls. I haven't met up with David Blunkett yet, and it may be I'll be surprised about whether there's someone
like that around now.'

Ross criticised the Government for drawing up crime reduction programmes when, he believes, such plans should be created by experts. 'The frustration is that there's no self-belief in the Government,' he continued. 'They don't believe they can radically reduce crime and therefore will only play at doing
things they think they ought to do.

'If they set themselves targets they fail to meet, they're deliberately risking an election loser, because if they don't take it on and levels remain just as bad as before, no one will penalise them for it.'

But Ross, who presided over Crimewatch programmes that featured cases such as the 1992 abduction of estate agent Stephanie Slater and the murder of the Liverpool toddler Jamie Bulger, also lays responsibility for the failure at the feet of the criminal justice system and the police.

'It's self-evident that reduction of crime is not what the criminal justice system is primarily there to achieve and, if it is, it's incredibly badly equipped to do it,' he said. 'The body serves some nominal view of crime that has no constructive use. Actually, it's very well named because it's all about justice for the criminal and none for society.'

The failure of the criminal justice system, which costs the taxpayer around £13 billion a year, filters down to the police who, claims Ross, don't have to fulfil even most elementary tasks. 'The criminal justice system doesn't even
require the police to do basic things, like keep their statistics in a useful way that would help in building up a realistic picture of crime across the country,' he said.

In an attempt to turn the reduction of crime into a science rather than an emotive reaction, Ross has helped establish the Jill Dando Institute to bring together, among others, economists, psychologists and physicists. 'To beat crime, we need to get clear scientific evidence we can use in a
straightforward, engineered approach.'

'Crimewatch - Solved, The Inside Story', a history of the programme, is published this week.