It's no good telling us there's less crime. The British people know better
He was sauntering down the street holding a foot long machete.
As it happened, the local MP was out campaigning just around the corner. Cue an impressively speedy police response. Mindful of the murder of two politicians (Jo Cox and Sir David Amess) they quickly cordoned off the area and apprehended the suspect, who was charged with possession of an offensive weapon in a public place.
Today that teenager is at liberty to do the same thing again. Somehow or other, when the case came to court, he was found not guilty of any crime.
Quite what defence his legal team mounted is a mystery: prosecutors had no shortage of witnesses and photographic evidence. For now, the case is just another illustration of the proliferation of offensive weapons on our streets, and the challenges associated with securing convictions.
In the kind of Third World hell-holes where armed militias rule by fear, machetes are practically fashion accessories. When bladed weapons are carried casually in rural England, yet no convictions follow, clearly we have a problem.
The exact nature of the crime wave sweeping Britain is the subject of much debate, with conflicting data sets recently triggering a 'war of statistics' between politicians and commentators. Some argue that overall crime is in fact falling – citing evidence from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), which shows a dramatic drop in offences excluding fraud, from 19.8m in the 1990s to 4.6m a year today. Others insist the survey bears little relation to 'lived experience', especially in urban areas.
What few dispute is that petty crime is rocketing, just as public confidence in the police is collapsing. Ordinary people can see the explosion of lawlessness with their own eyes – and are stunned by how little anyone seems to be doing about it. This is not just about theft from supermarkets and other stores, which, at the rate of three cases per minute, is forcing thousands of businesses to hide stock, lock their doors and hire more guards. It is also about mugging and phone theft, rates of which are out of control in some city centres, especially London. Meanwhile a 'shrug-shrug' approach towards weed smoking in public and tube fare dodging has allowed such behaviour to become commonplace. The proliferation of masked youths using electric bikes to deliver fast food and perhaps worse has added to the impression that the authorities are turning a blind eye to criminal activity, some of it by illegal immigrants.
This general sense of lawlessness is what Nigel Farage was talking about when he declared that our country is facing 'societal collapse'. Apocalyptic sounding? Yes. Born out by every line of crime data? No. But reflective of how hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people in this country actually feel? Absolutely.
Plucking the most convenient statistics, ministers, and commentators can protest all they like that this crisis is imaginary. All their denials do is fuel mistrust in an Establishment that seems at best, hopelessly out of touch; at worst, mendacious.
When one of his first decisions as prime minister was to let a bunch of hardened criminals out of jail, Sir Keir Starmer can hardly complain. The sight of champagne-spraying convicts swaggering out of prison gates into waiting Lamborghinis created a very early impression that this government would be soft on crime. It was an extraordinary message for any newly elected government to convey.
Since then, the government's decision to keep rolling out of the red carpet for individuals who enter the UK illegally – including sex offenders, drug dealers and other criminals – has done nothing to boost public confidence in the maintenance of law and order. How could it, when every boat load of illegal immigrants (some 45,000 since Starmer entered No 10) literally increases the population of known law-breakers? Illegal immigration is another so-called 'victimless' crime that is not reflected in the Crime Survey for England and Wales.
Meanwhile there is no doubting the policing crisis. Such is the recruitment and retention nightmare that some months, the Metropolitan Police is said to struggle to attract a single new entrant. As the blue line is stretched as thin as gossamer, police chiefs are getting increasingly desperate. To plug the gap, in London, senior officers have been ordered to return to the beat. Naturally, the new policy has not gone down well with highly trained firearms officers and forensic investigators who thought their days of dealing with road traffic accidents and drunks in A+E were long behind them. Nonetheless, needs must: bobbies on the beat are becoming an endangered species. Just 12 per cent of the 30,000 people questioned for the CSEW see them regularly – a fall of two thirds since 2010.
As for crime-solving rates, they are woeful, with just 5.7 per cent of offences resulting in a charge. That is half the figure in 2015. No wonder fewer than 50 per cent of people say they are satisfied with police performance – the lowest proportion in the survey's history.
Worryingly, news of the crime wave is spreading beyond these shores. When tourists, business travellers and other overseas visitors fall victim to our lawless streets, they can be forgiven for warning their compatriots. Donald Trump's outspoken attack on London Mayor Sadiq Khan seems likely to fuel international concern about the capital.
What happens when the police can't or won't do their job, prisons are overflowing and frightened citizens lose confidence in their political leaders?
The answer is that ordinary folk, who would much prefer to be getting on with their lives, but are increasingly alarmed by what is happening to their neighbourhoods, become tempted to take the law into their own hands. Already, we are on the cusp of this, as 'justice seekers' without any party political affiliations have begun hanging around migrant hotels trying to gather incriminating evidence. Meanwhile a growing number of affluent communities and business groups have resorted to paying private security companies to patrol neighbourhoods. And who can blame them?
Unless our leaders get a grip – and fast – exasperated communities will turn vigilante.
Then things could get really ugly.
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