The Cop Shop is Closed

ANYBODY who has had the misfortune to have been on the receiving end of what is today erroneously considered 'minor' criminality will know how utterly ineffective the police generally are in dealing with it. They simply lack the appropriate power and incentive to respond decisively to these lesser incidents, which although 'minor' are nevertheless extremely unpleasant for those innocents involved, and this helplessness plainly shows in the harried faces and grim attitudes of older officers who are able to recall a time when things were very different. Even if an arrest is made it is very unlikely the culprit, if charged, will receive a meaningful sentence. Legislation like 1984's Police and Criminal Evidence Act (admittedly modified somewhat by Labour's headline-grabbing 2005 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act) and, more recently, the Human Rights Act have rendered the police virtually impotent, and it is undoubtedly these restrictive enactments alongside the decline of a visible police presence upon our streets which have played a significant role in the upward trajectory of wanton criminality in the UK.
A clear impression of this physical absence was provided by the discovery that over the preceding 14 years a staggering 880 police stations have closed, with a mere 376 opening in their stead; the overall net loss being 504 by March 2006. Of those remaining stations less than six per cent are open 24 hours a day, many closing overnight. This desertion en masse by those charged with our protection from the depredations of the criminal classes has had a palpable effect on the confidence of both the law-abiding public and the criminal: the former is demoralised and afraid, whilst the latter is energised and emboldened. Only by maintaining a visible and proactive police presence on our streets supported by a genuinely punitive justice system is the canker of crime, which daily gnaws at the very fabric of our society, to be extricated.