What happened to the rule of law in this country?
The outrage bank is empty – it’s shocking how unshockable we are
When did it happen? When did we become this ugly society where violent crime is an accepted part of life? See how our reactions are blunted, how hard it is for anything to shock us any more.
Acid thrown at two teenagers causes life-changing injuries? Oh, not again… A drive-by shooting on a street in broad daylight leaves an innocent girl dead? Mild flicker of dismay. Man drives car at speed into cyclists at the Palace of Westminster in an alleged copycat terrorist attack? Well, at least nobody died this time, quite lucky really. Another man is stabbed to death on a London street as police announce an inquiry into the murder of a nurse at her home in Teddington? Resigned shrug. Well, it’s the 100th such investigation in the capital this year. What do you expect?
The outrage tank is empty. Truly, it’s shocking how unshockable we are.
“It’s practically one a day,” John Humphrys said on the Today programme yesterday. It certainly feels like that. Last year, violent crime soared by 20per cent, with 1.5million offences recorded, and those are just the ones the police bother to write down. God knows what the actual figure is. In Lawless London, the total attacks involving a knife or bladed instrument recorded in the year to March 2018 rose to 40,147. Excluding the victims of terrorist attacks, there was a 12per cent rise in murders, but you can bet that total will soar once they factor in the summer bloodbath.
It’s not just London. Barbaric incidents, which once felt reassuringly far away, creep closer to our own hollyhock-fringed doorsteps. A mass shooting at a street party in Manchester injured 10 people, including two children. Even the most vulnerable are not immune. The number of vicious assaults on the over-65s has leapt a sickening 258per cent in the past decade. In 2017, 26,474 pensioners were the victims of violent crime. Iris Warner, a retired bank clerk in north-west London, was beaten in the face by a burglar wielding a blunt instrument until she was unrecognisable to her own family. Iris is 90 years old. Looking at a picture of her savagely bruised face, a study in raw anguish, you think what you would like to see done to the brute who hurt her so.
And what exactly is the Metropolitan Police doing to find Mrs Warner’s vile attacker? Well, we do know that the Met takes hate crime very seriously; unfortunately, beating a nonagenarian unconscious isn’t the right kind of hate crime.
My faith in the forces of law and order reached an all-time low recently when Cressida Dick, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, solemnly announced that Boris Johnson would not be prosecuted for his recent Daily Telegraph column opposing a ban on the burka. “I spoke to my very experienced officers who deal with hate crime,” Ms Dick told the BBC Asian Network, “I can tell you that my preliminary view, having spoken to them, is that what Mr Johnson said would not reach the bar for a criminal offence.”
Reassuring, isn’t it? There we have the chief of London’s police, whose city is in the grip of a stabbing epidemic, telling us that Boris will not face arrest for a couple of jokes ( jolly decent of you, Cressida!). Wasting police time is a crime. Police wasting police time is encouraged in an age when politically correct box-ticking trumps a teen disembowelled in Camberwell.
We’re fed up of this, aren’t we? Grown weary of the grim nightly roll call. Dismayed and disbelieving when we hear that a third of bobbies on the beat have been axed over the past three years amid an unprecedented surge in violence. The officers that remain spend 22per cent of their time on “support functions”, 47per cent policing roads and community work, while only 31per cent of working hours are given over to dealing with criminals. A mere 13per cent – pass the smelling salts, Marjorie! – is devoted to investigating crime. Some 90per cent of all crimes committed in Britain do not result in prosecution. No wonder our lovely, peaceful village is in the middle of a 3-for-2 burglary special offer. And all this, mark you, on the watch of a Conservative Government.
Given the happy accident of a criminal actually being caught, chances that they will be removed to a place where they can do no further harm are slender. According to the Civitas think tank, only a third of those convicted of violent crimes receive custodial sentences. Tender arguments about overcrowded prisons overlook the crucial fact that at least while a violent man is behind bars, he cannot destroy the lives of others.
On Twitter two days ago, Zac Goldsmith drew attention to the case of Adele Bellis, an acid attack victim who is “terrified” because the villain who doused her in a skin-pulping liquid is about to be freed and wants to move near her. The 26-year-old beautician had her ear and half her hair burnt off in a 2014 hit ordered by her ex-boyfriend. “Two years and three years for the pair who destroyed this person,” tweeted the Tory MP for Richmond Park, “is that the value we attach to an innocent life? Conservatives have been in charge for nearly a decade, yet this perverse sentencing continues. It is utterly shameful.”
I reckon Zac Goldsmith speaks for us all. What the hell is the criminal justice system up to if it awards such pathetic sentences, and early release, to cocksure thugs who horribly disfigured a young woman, yet are allowed to resume their normal lives while she is still receiving treatment for scars that will never fade? It’s… well, the word that comes to mind is criminal.
Far from reducing crime, this so-called “compassionate”, liberal approach has turned city streets into abattoirs and emboldened young men to assume control of entire neighbourhoods while the police are tied up parsing Boris’s puns. Misguided “anti-racist” policies, given the blessing of Theresa May when she was Home Secretary, saw the curbing of stop and search, which has led to the murder of scores of mainly black youngsters. All credit to Iain Duncan Smith and a report by the Centre for Social Justice, which yesterday called on police to dramatically increase the use of stop and search to combat spiralling drug violence.
It can be done, you know. At the Notting Hill Carnival over the weekend, metal detectors known as “knife arches” were placed at key points, and 7,000 officers were given special powers to search anyone they believed might be carrying a blade. Lo and behold, there were 25 arrests for possession of an offensive weapon. That’s not racist; it’s called protecting the public, regardless of creed or colour.
Once the guarantors of law and order, the Conservatives are increasingly looking like the party of laughable sentences and disorder. We have all given up on the backboneless Mrs May, but Sajid Javid, our new Home Secretary, has the chance to show criminals who’s boss. Voters would cheer. The police must be given the resources they need and a new list of priorities. Reading Telegraph columns in a fruitless search for things to be offended by should not be among them. A reallocation of half of the £14billion foreign aid budget to keep the British people safe, instead of bribing odious dictators, would be a good start.
Prison reformers may warn against tougher jail sentences and the risk of miscarriages of justice, but we have those already. Look at the face of 90-year-old Iris Warner. There is no justice so long as the man who attacked Iris lives without fear of the law.