There is a way to beat crime
by PETER HITCHENS

There is an amazingly easy way to restore peace and order to the streets of this country. It would also be popular and not specially expensive-And it would be a first step towards the restoration of morals, manners, self-restraint and national pride that we so badly need. So why will nobody do what is necessary?

As I researched my book I realised just how few small changes had been needed to overthrow the old system. But I also grasped that politicians of all parties, civil servants, judges and senior policemen were in the grip of foolish and mistaken ideas which had gone unchallenged for too long.

Yet there are still plenty of judges, police and prison officers with good sense and wisdom, who know that what is now going on is wrong, but are powerless to prevent it.

Much of this crisis, shockingly, was caused by the Tories, who made things far worse during their 18 years in office. While making noises about crackdowns and tough sentences, they fatally weakened the police with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and destroyed adult authority with the Children Act 1989. They also made the grave mistake of using crime as an excuse to attack civil liberties, which is useless as well as dangerous.

Real toughness lies in being politically incorrect. We have to reject the social-worker ideas which lay behind the disastrous prison and police reforms of the Sixties. We have to reject the idea that crime is caused by poverty or social conditions - not least because it is simply not true.

For just as we have become richer than at any time in our history, we also have the most lavish social provisions.

Welfare


Welfare handouts from the state now total about £120 billion a year, the entire product of all the income tax paid by everyone in the country.

Very simply, we have to rediscover the basic idea that crime is wrong and must be prevented. Where it cannot be prevented, it must be punished.

We must stop being ashamed to punish people. It is good for them, because it forces them to reconsider lives gone wrong. It is good for their victims, nowadays almost all of us. It makes us less likely to want to take personal revenge on those who have wronged us and it makes us feel as if justice has been done.

And it is good for potential lawbreakers who, seeing what happens to those who are caught, think hard before embarking on crime.

Death penalty


To make punishment effective we first of all have to restore its gold standard, the death penalty for heinous premeditated murder. I am so certain that the restoration of hanging would deter armed crime, reduce violence and protect the police from danger that I am prepared to make this offer to its opponents.

Reintroduce it for an experimental period of ten years. Promise not to obstruct it during that time. If at the end of ten years it has not had any effect, then I shall support its abolition.

Unless we put a special value on innocent life, we really have no scale of values at all.

Since hanging was abolished, there has been a great inflation in prison sentences. Many more people are in prison and they are sent there for longer, though few of these sentences are actually served in full. The authorities are desperate to release prisoners as soon as they can.

Prisons are for punishment


Then we have to bring back the idea that prisons are for punishment.

At the moment they are warehouses where people are kept until they are released. The loss of liberty is seen as punishment enough, and the authorities have little control over the prisoners' lives. The result is a double disaster. The jails are often run by the inmates, are full of illegal drugs, and plagued by violence and intimidation.

Prisoners should not have TV sets in their cells. They should not be able to telephone the outside world or be given drugs during visits. They should not have a choice of menu. Life should be basic and austere.

Above all, they should work to pay for their keep, to pay compensation to their victims and to build up savings for when they are released. That work should be hard and productive. In certain cases it should be done in public by chain gangs, as it is in some parts of the United States.

The sight of prisoners scrubbing off graffiti and picking up litter would send a powerful and shocking message to all who saw it. To the citizen it would show that justice was being done again. To the criminal and the potential offender it would be a warning that would stay in the mind.

It would also do much to make our urban landscape look less neglected and abandoned, one of the main reasons why criminals and other wrongdoers come to believe that there is no one in charge, and that they can misbehave without any consequences.

Patrols


The return of proper police foot patrols, as used successfully until the Sixties, would be another vital step. There are plenty of officers available for this task, if only they were freed from the silly legislation and bad leadership which prevents them from doing their job.

These simple changes, implemented firmly, would be popular and effective. Within a few months, they would change the atmosphere of our country and greatly strengthen the forces of good against the forces of wickedness and disorder.

They would not threaten any innocent person. They would prevent many young people from falling into the fumbling hands of the criminal justice system - because they would not risk getting into trouble in the first place.

But great political boldness would be needed to do these things. Britain would have to break free of the foolish European Convention on Human Rights, which has created so many 'rights' for criminals and destroyed those of the rest of us.

Much of the criminal justice legislation of the past 40 years would have to be repealed and revised. The absurd lawsuit culture inaugurated by the last Tory government would have to be curbed, by once again banning 'no win, no fee' cases and putting ambulance-chasing lawyers out of business. At the moment, no major party has given serious thought to this.

Labour still pretends that it can cure crime by social spending. The Tories are in a state of utter confusion, and refuse to accept that punishment is at the heart of any penal system.

But discontent and even rage are growing everywhere, as the poor have to endure levels of crime unknown for centuries, and even the safe middle classes now feel threatened by pandemic burglary and car theft.

The danger is that this swelling public anger will be harnessed by unscrupulous and illiberal leaders, who will use it to destroy our ancient liberties, to arm the police and place us all in prison conditions, under constant CCTV surveillance, required to carry ID cards, deprived of the right to silence and jury trial.

David Blunkett's latest plan - to keep DNA records of everyone-who is arrested - is another example of this mistaken Big Brother attitude, which assumes that we are all guilty until proven innocent. Such measures will not even work, as we will find out only after it is too late.

We urgently need politicians who reject this route, who are more interested in the rights of the law-abiding and respectable than in the rights of the wicked, who want to take liberty away only from those who break the rules. Our society can only remain free if it rediscovers the concepts of right and wrong, and uses all its might to protect the good and restrain the bad. It is not yet too late, but we do not have long.


A Brief History Of Crime, by Peter Hitchens, is published by Atlantic at £16.99 on April 11. To order your signed copy at £13.99 plus £1.95 p&p, call the Review Bookstore on 0870 165 0870.