Despite many, many failings of the Labour government, this is the best thing I've read all week, as it takes a much longer view out than we normally get from our news.
Chief among people’s worries is their security. Under Labour, fear of crime climbed until by 2007 it had become the issue that pollsters identified as the main complaint among voters. (Since then worries about the economy have eclipsed all else.) The heightened fears are a puzzle to criminologists, who point out that over the past 15 years Britain has experienced a steady, deep fall in crime. The statistics are notoriously hard to interpret, but according to the British Crime Survey, the Home Office’s most reliable measure though still far from perfect, crime overall has dropped by 45% since its peak in 1995.
To simplify massively, during the Conservative reign crime went up and up, until Labour voted in, and since then it's been going down and down and down?
And what about our crazy CCTV addiction - none in 1980 (to speak of), and a camera for every 14 citizens now, at what cost: does it make any difference? Could that money be better spent on education and welfare instead?
Less crime, less killing, fewer teenage mums, far fewer fags, perhaps a bit less drink and drugs: why is it that the idea of “broken Britain” rings true with so many, when it seems far from reality? Partly, it is because people’s ideas about the state of society are simply inaccurate: the average voter reckons that four out of ten teenagers have children, for instance, whereas in fact perhaps three in a hundred do. Official statistics to the contrary are viewed with suspicion after successive governments have relentlessly massaged them.
Fascinating stuff.
A similar phenomenon has been happening in the U.S. At the same time the crime rate was decreasing, the popular perception was that it was increasing, entirely due to increased coverage in the news media. I imagine there's a feedback effect there - people read/hear crime reports and become concerned; the media then increasingly focuses on crime reporting to meet the "increased concern." To keep people interested, the tone of these reports must also become more alarmist and hysterical. That the crime rate is going down is irrelevant - the media simply have to go farther afield to find crimes worth reporting...
For me, this constantly serves as a personal reminder as to how much of our reality is mediated, constructed from elements beyond what we actually experience.
Posted by: bob_d | February 12, 2010 at 20:12
Miserable isn't it?
I noticed here that the Metro started reporting on knife crimes in Europe, presumably because there were no fresh knife crimes to report on here at the time.
Scourge of society, this so-called "news"...
Posted by: Alice | February 12, 2010 at 20:49
Very cool; thanks for the link :)
Posted by: Sebastian | February 13, 2010 at 00:15
The 14 cameras thing is a horrible lie. More info on factcheck: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/society/factcheck+how+many+cctv+cameras/2291167
Posted by: Phil Wilson | February 22, 2010 at 13:24