While it’s clear that putting policepeople on the streets has no inherent direct impact on crime taking place (compare the number of streets to the maximum possible number of police on them to see why), until now there appeared to be two possible reasons why visible policing might work.
The first – that the risk of running into a policemen might scare away criminals – relies on criminals being both rational enough to fear being caught by the police, and stupid enough to completely miscalculate the risks. This is possible in some cases – although drug-addled crazies on the one hand, and ‘professional’ career burglars on the other, would seem to raise some difficulties.
A more significant reason is the idea that increasing the numbers of police might reduce people’s excessively high fear of crime (for example, unless you’re a career criminal or a young black male, your chances of being shot in the UK are negligible. Nonzero, but negligible. Gun crime is something that’s a serious problem in some places for some people, and that problem needs to be dealt with – but it’s insane for the general population to fear it [*]). This would make everyone happier, and would hopefully reduce the impact of “let’s all be nastier to everyone” political creeds.
However, it now appears that this theory doesn’t actually work either. Which is doubtless why once-sensible Tory Oliver Letwin picked this week to announce his plans to waste taxpayer money on putting 40,000 new police on the beat…
My message to the Tories: fuck off. Spend the money on schools and transport, or cut taxes. Crime’s already low enough not to be a serious worry unless you’re neurotic, and I don’t want my taxes wasted on a policy that won’t even make the closeted suburban ninnies it’s designed to appease happier…
* I deliberately chose to live in a reasonably high gun crime area last time I moved house: cheap areas to live in Manchester tend to involve knife crime, gun crime, or serious boredom. Knife crime is frequently directed at people like me. Gun crime isn’t…