The Musings of Harry

ACPO has told a House of Lords committee that CCTV is not much use in deterring drunken violence.

Well: duh. The last thing drunken fuckwits are going to do is be violent rationally. The same ACPO official said that CCTV is still useful in car parks and so forth. He was, in other words, finally admitting that which has long been obvious to everyone with a pulse: CCTV is only a deterrent when it is targeted.  Various idiot politicians have taken this reality and extended it, in an authoritarian, nosey wet dream, to all places, everywhere, all the time. It won’t work that way: like all things, it is not a panacea.

Perhaps we should print cards emblazoned with “X is not a panacea”, and distribute them to all government officials. Like a flashcard. A cheat-sheet.  They could be kept in wallets and handbags, to be pulled out and referred to liberally throughout the day.

I think it’s worth a try: it may at least hold us over until we can vote the lot of them out of office.

I do so love it when hard research backs up my long held suspicions.

Geeklawyer was kind enough to send me a link to this story. In a nutshell: there doesn’t seem to be any meaningful correlation between the numbers of cameras operated by the Police and crime clean-up rates.

The number of cameras in each London borough was compared to the crime clean-up rate for that borough. The borough with the most cameras, Hackney (1,484 cameras), had an above average clean-up rate of 22.2%, but Brent (164 cameras) has the highest rate in London: 25.9%. Several boroughs with 700-900 cameras fail to reach the average of 21%, as do several other boroughs with only 100 or so. There is quite clearly no correlation here: cameras appear not to be substantively useful for solving crimes.

Some will say that cameras deter crimes in the first place, but I doubt this. The rise of the hoody strikes me as a rather obvious countermeasure to cameras, which are usually mounted overhead. Criminals seem to care so little about being caught on camera that enough footage of criminal activity has been produced to sustain several television programmes dedicated to exhibiting the antics of the underclass for light entertainment. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to see some research that includes this data too: the total rate of reported crime, the clean-up rate, and the number of cameras, plotted against date for each London borough and going back 20 years would be ideal.

Perhaps one day, when I don’t have a million other things to do, I will have a go!

Why is it that Mark Milton was cleared of any crime after being caught driving at 159mph, but Tim Brady was jailed for ten weeks, banned for three years and ordered to pay costs after driving at 172mph on the A420?

Here’s a clue:

Of Tim Brady, in sentencing, Judge David Morton had the following to say:

“Your driving was criminally self-indulgent and utterly thoughtless of the danger you might be creating for the innocent.”

Of Mark Milton, on acquitting, District Judge Bruce Morgan made these comments:

“Those who get their (advanced level driving) certificates should be able to familiarise themselves with it. We have to live in the real world. Criminals are not so considerate as to only commit their offences in broad daylight and then make their getaway on traffic-free roads.

‘I am told that advanced drivers have to keep their skills finely tuned in the same way that batsmen don’t walk to the crease at Lord’s without practising - batsmen have spent countless hours in the nets, learning and re-learning and digesting their art.”

It is quite clear that Morgan bent over backwards to acquit Mark Milton, and by now I’m sure you can tell why: Milton is an inconsiderate tosser who’s also a policeman, but Brady’s just an inconsiderate tosser. The extent of the judiciary’s bias against prosecuting police officers in this country is profoundly worrying. I do suppose, though, that we really can’t have much of a chance of prosecuting officers for dangerous driving if we can’t even prosecute them for murder.

Thankfully, it looks as though this officer at least has a chance of being more appropriately sentenced for his crime: the DPP has appealed and one Lady Justice Hallen has allowed the appeal to go forward, saying that his driving ability was irrelevant to the case. Well… no shit.

For anyone that doubts that fixed penalties for disorder are not a terribly good idea, consider this story, concerning a man who was issued an fine for criminal damage after a police car pulled up onto the pavement and ran over his foot.

Police shouldn’t be judges. Their job is not to ascertain guilt or to sentence. Their job is to gather evidence, charge people, and pass them to a court for judgement. When you give the police the power to arrest people, decide they’re guilty and sentence them on the spot — and to discourage them from questioning their judgement by forcing you to risk doubling your fine if you contest it and are found guilty — bad things happen.

This story is, admittedly, bizarre,  but there are others that are less strange and more disconcerting. Consider the student who called a policeman’s horse gay. Consider people who unwittingly wear the wrong kind of t-shirt, or who, even worse, wear one with a political agenda. Consider the case of a person who was overheard swearing in a private conversation.

Bear in mind, too, that these are just the ones we’ve heard about. How many of these manifestly unjust fines go unnoticed because people don’t realise they can be contested, or don’t have the resources to do so, or are scared about being fined more?

Here, most unfortunately, we go again.

I recently posted about the partisan brain, and about how Neil Harding rather exemplifies it. It seems he was all too eager to offer up another example.

Mr Harding, it would seem, wishes to go even further than some police offers, who recently suggested that we should collect DNA for anyone who is arrested. He thinks that we should collect DNA from everyone (presumably at birth — who knows?) and keep it on file, just in case you commit a crime.

Harding says that the DNA database helps police catch the “correct perpetrators of many crimes”. He says that the success of the database is “unquestionable”. His use of words is interesting, considering that people are, in fact, questioning it: just last week, in Liberty’s response to the Home Office consultation on PACE, they asserted that the National DNA Database “does not seem to have a significant impact upon crime detection”. In fact, although the number of samples on the database has increased steadily since it was introduced…

…the rate of crime detected using the database has stayed at about 0.35% of all recorded crime (see Liberty response). If the database were so useful, one would expect that it would facilitate the detection of more crimes as it grew larger. That does not seem to be the case. It is, therefore, of questionable value. I’m sure it has a place, but collecting the DNA of everyone arrested, let alone everyone alive, is not it.

Another terribly important point to make is that all systems have a rate of failure. Although (bar twins) an individual’s DNA is unique, we are not necessarily able to collect, store or compare samples with sufficient precision to make a DNA profile unique to an individual. Just as with fingerprints, DNA profiling techniques do experience false positives and false negatives, and just as with fingerprints, these rates are more than one might expect. Here is an excellent page detailing many such experiences.

I’ve written about these problems before, so I’ll leave the subject there, except to say that a good way to deal with these problems is to keep the database as small as possible. By keeping the database small, one minimises the number of failures, making them more manageable. This, quite neatly, makes it eminently sensible to restrict people placed onto the database to those convicted of a crime: perhaps even only those convicted of a serious crime. The usefulness of the system is maintained, as is the privacy of innocent people: something which, quite clearly, Harding grossly undervalues.

PS: If the database is so fantastically useful, and if a person being arrested is a useful indicator of criminality, why didn’t Levy, Evans and Turner have their DNA sampled?

The Home Office’s review of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act was published today.

Having read it, I have to say that it is reasonably balanced. A wide range of views are expressed. One wonders what will happen next. Privacy International expressed the rather scathing view that the proposals being considered were vague and undefined, and that the Home Office was merely going through the motions in conducting a public consultation at all. One hopes that they are wrong. Here, in any event, are the things that caught my eye.

Powers of Arrest
Two points of note here. First is the eminently sensible suggestion that the citizen’s power of arrest should be extended to apply to any offence, not just to an indictable offence. If a citizen reasonably suspects that a crime is being committed, it is proper that they should be able to restrain the suspected offender until the police arrive. To expect a citizen to have sufficient knowledge of the law to know whether or not the offence is indictable or not is unrealistic.

Second is the depressingly predictable suggestion that PCSOs be given the power of arrest, the argument being that since they have the power to detain people for 30 minutes until real police arrive, they have de facto powers of arrest anyway. One must ask: if PCSOs are to be given powers of arrest, what differentiates them from real police? They must, if given powers of arrest, be “police on the cheap” as this blogger has suspected all along. The remit of PCSOs is different from that of real police (and, frankly, questionable) and the distinction is important. They are receive less training and less pay. They are not police officers, and it is not right to expect them to perform the same duties.

Collection of Biometric Data
Here we go again with crackpot suggestions from senior police officers. One Inspector Thomas Huntley responded to the review with the suggestion that the power to collect DNA should be extended to allow the collection of samples from people arrested for non-recordable offences: speeding, littering etc. In support of this suggestion, he offers the following, ridiculously bone-headed, argument:

“… failure to do so could be seen as giving the impression that an individual who commits a non-recordable offence could not be a repeat offender and therefore only those arrested for recordable offences are likely to have offended before.”

I reject his premise, utterly. The mere fact that a police officer chooses to arrest someone does not imply guilt; it does not imply that they are an offender at all, let alone a repeat offender. Retaining DNA samples only for those convicted of an offence should be the standard that we set for inclusion in the National DNA Database. ACPO may not agree with that, but even they think that sampling people for littering is a step too far:

But despite some support for the police’s request to massively expand the database, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) warned that granting such powers could contribute to the increasing “criminalisation of generally law-abiding public”.

On the same topic, Liberty threw down the gauntlet with a challenge to the assumption that the NDNAD is even useful: they say that statistically, it has had little impact upon the detection of crimes. Another encouraging suggestion came from the Human Genetics Commission, which expressed concern that DNA samples are held for innocent people, and suggested that those convicted of minor crimes should have their samples destroyed if they do not reoffend for a set period. Good stuff.

Search Warrants
Finally, the review reports that several respondents suggested that the power to issue search warrants should be removed from magistrates and conferred upon police superintendents! The suggestion is that the issuing of these warrants would then be reported to the courts after the fact. In an astonishing display of doublethink, one respondent from the CPS even claimed that such a move would increase accountability and transparency… This asinine suggestion is further evidence of a worrying trend: the reduction of the role of the judiciary in overseeing the actions of the police. Search warrants need to be approved before they are executed, not after it is too late to take action if a warrant is unreasonable.

When the time comes for the Home Office to announce what changes will be made to PACE — if any — it will be very interesting to see which of these suggestions are taken on board.

A story in the Metro yesterday reported that the wife of Blair’s former Chief of Staff, Sarah Helm, has accused the Police of using “Gestapo tactics” in the cash-for-honours enquiry.

What a stupid statement. It is, if nothing else, a bizarre mutation of Godwin’s Law — being somewhat cynical, however, I suspect this to be a bald-faced attempt to garner sympathy for Poor Old Ruth Turner. Now that the CPS has decided, in typically useless form, not to pursue the case, the government and its associates on the fringes are free to start shooting their mouths about how unfair the whole thing was in the first place, and how awful it was for our hard working, selfless public servants to be the target of a police investigation that was obviously groundless. Yes. Groundless. The CPS just said so, right?

Well, no, not really. They said that there wasn’t enough evidence to bring charges. This is clearly a subjective point, and it’s difficult not to believe that no politicking took place. Harry, for one, suspects strongly that Turner, Lord Cashpoint et al are as guilty as sin, and should be dealt with accordingly.

If poor old Ruth Turner can’t handle being woken up in the earlies by the police, then she shouldn’t break the law. Let it ring, for the benefit of Ms Helm and other sycophants, loudly and clearly from the atop the roofs.

Update: I said Ruth Kelly, when I meant Ruth Turner. Oops. Fixed.

The BBC reports that the police are to be given real-time access to congestion charge data, in order to catch more of those pesky terrorists. I’m a little surprised that this doesn’t happen already, considering ACPO’s current policy regarding the collection and use of ANPR data nationally, but no matter.

This is a perfect example of the kind of function creep that should not be allowed to happen. It is the most insidious kind of policy change: massive in scope, important in principle, but almost invisible in everyday life and introduced with no fanfare. They say it’s only for matters involving national security, but how long will it be until they have routine access to check for people’s insurance status, too? This policy demonstrates that the Home Office consider this kind of function creep to be acceptable. Why draw the line here?

Originally the police had access only on a case-by-case basis: they had to justify their requests every time they wanted to access the data. This is an entirely sensible measure. It is of critical importance that police powers are checked by the judiciary. Without this safeguard, civil liberties will suffer: the police always think they’re right, and lack the independence necessary to ensure that their more invasive powers are used proportionately. Precisely the same is true in most walks of life: getting someone else’s perspective is often illuminating. It’s hard to be objective when you’re in the thick of something.

The judiciary have a crucial role to play when it comes to the oversight of police powers, and this government has and is eroding that role. They characterise these checks as putting obstacles in the way of the police, and express shock that anyone should want to do that. They push through more and more draconian measures on the back of people’s fear of terrorism, never admitting that, in actual fact, the chances of the average person getting blown up by a terrorist come a fairly distant second to being hit by lightning, or winning the lottery. Prudent precautions are sensible, routine abuses of civil liberties are not. They are, in fact, counter-productive: over-zealous security and reductions in civil liberties do more to create a climate of fear than the terrorist acts which prompt them.

PS: It seems they’re already planning to use this data for routine policing. There’s a surprise!

Section 1.6 of the Health Act 2006 requires that all smoke-free premises display signs prohibiting smoking, or face a fine.

This requirement seems rather tedious to me. I was walking down a London high street a few days ago, and almost every shop displayed the “No Smoking” sign which has become ubiquitous since the beginning of the month. After the third or fourth shop, I found myself thinking: “OK: I get the message…”

Failing to display No Smoking signs is now an offence, the fine for which is set by secondary legislation. The only statutory limit is that it may not exceed a level on the Standard Scale, so the fine could be as much as £5,000, should a Secretary of State so choose. It is currently set at level three (£1000), but even that seems onerous when you consider that these signs really serve no purpose whatsoever: surely only people living in caves are unaware of the smoking ban.

I initially thought that perhaps the signage requirements had a sunset clause, which would make some measure of sense, but it seems that they do not. Perhaps, in the fullness of time, they’ll just repeal it –or maybe it’ll stay in place until smoking has long since dropped from favour, thereby becoming an entertaining anachronism.

PS: on a slightly more pedantic note, it’s strange that the designer of the sign elected to put a full stop after “no smoking” (which doesn’t need one: it’s essentially a title) but not after the text explaining the penalty (which should have one: it’s a sentence).

ITN reports that the Chief Constable of Northumbria Police, Mike Craik, wants to toughen knife crime laws so that carrying a knife in a public place is an imprisonable offence. This marvellously stupid suggestion comes at a time when the Judiciary are telling us that prison sentences don’t work, and when prisons are full anyway. What a bright spark Mike must be. Knife crime is a cultural problem, and it needs a cultural solution. Putting people in prison for trivial offences is at best ineffective, and at worse, ineffective, illiberal, and a stupendous waste of money.

I understand the frustration of the police. It must be difficult to have to see the same people committing the same petty offences over and over again, even more so when there’s not much they can do — but imprisoning more people isn’t the solution. It might stop the police from having to deal with it (temporarily, anyway) but really it’s just spreading the problem around. Petty offenders will nearly always be back, presenting the same behaviour and creating the same problems, probably with an even worse attitude. They won’t go away until the underlying causes of their behaviour are addressed, and that means rehabilitation — not punishment.

Of course, rehabilitation and cultural change are hard, which is why the knee-jerk right-wing don’t like it. Why help people improve their lives when we can just let them rot in overcrouded jails? Out of sight, out of mind.

This blogger thinks that there must be a better solution than that.