You look a bit dodgy....off to gaol with you!

[InsaneApache]

Another eyecatching initiative from 'Uncle' Tony.

How to tackle crime before it happens

The age of Minority Report and fighting pre-crime is upon us. Well, if you believe this Sunday Times report that the PM is keen to introduce "violent offender orders" for people who haven't yet committed a crime but the authorities think likely to.

But I'm a bit surprised at the timidity of Downing Street. Given that the Government is already planning to monitor babies and toddlers for signs of antisocial tendencies, surely the Government could go one step further. Why not stop the wrong type of pesky people from procreating in the first place?

I'm sure Ministers have read Freakonomics which has a chapter that shows how the legalisation of abortion in 1973 helped cut crime in the 90s by reducing the supply of young, criminally-inclined males. (Here's a taster of Stephen Levitt's research.) So perhaps, the Government could set up a new quango (OfOffspring?) to give out Argos vouchers as incentives for people to undergo sterilisation. Hey, given public safety is paramount, I'm sure the State could force people to have abortions. Now that's what I call an "eye-catching initiative".

http://timesonline.typepad.com/comme...e_of_mino.html

I'm all for it. A good idea. Then they can free up more prison space by allowing all those murderers and rapists to walk out of the open prisons and let these potential miscreants take their places in the dispersal system.

Another view!

[KukriKhan]

So,you'll have violent offender orders ("voo"). Just combine them with exile to a North Sea island Directed Operational Out-Prisonment ("doo"),

and you have:

[Banquo's Ghost]

A report out today, by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies in association with The Sunday Times, reveals that almost half of the offenders caught by police are getting away without a court punishment,

That's an extremely dodgy statement isn't it? How do we know that someone is an offender unless they are tried and convicted in a court?

What a quaint idea. Was there ever a society that practised such horrifyingly liberal nonsense?

[Hosakawa Tito]

If the police arrested them they must be guilty of something.

[BDC]

If the police arrested them they must be guilty of something.

And if their parents can't phone up their mate Tony to get them out they are clearly too unimportant to matter anyway.

[Hosakawa Tito]

Ahh, the benefits of class and job security for moi. Bailiff, bring in the next guilty bastid, we have time for one more before tea.

[rory_20_uk]

Society is becoming more and more mechanised with fewer and fewer people doing jobs that earn masses of money, and then everyone else.

Since the blue collar worker is almost dead, we need to keep kids in school until 18 for some reason or other. Sure, many hate the place by 14, but what are they going to do then? Effectively schools are already bieng used as a form of open prison, as by forcing people to be there against their will is achieving no other function apart from they're not on the streets.

The difference between a low wage job and 30-60 hours a week and unemployment benefit for no work at all is too close so for many there's no incentive to bother. Slightly better jobs are to be an office drone filing next to pointless bits of paper or reports.

As the "cure" or "fix" isn't known, the government must be doing something, as if there's a new initiave then it's some time before it can be said to have failed. By that point there's been at least one or two more, and hence quietly forgotten.

Government job creation projects wouldn't be very popular, nor would national service. So we're only left with increasing the shool age, and pointless bits of paper to hand as a sop to the media.

[Idaho]

The problem Rory, is that the economy is designed to create more and more profit for those with the most money. Therefore there will be less for those with less. Society is not designed to make people's lives meaningful or enjoyable, merely to increase profit and avoid too much obvious unpleasantness.

[Husar]

The problem Rory, is that the economy is designed to create more and more profit for those with the most money. Therefore there will be less for those with less.

Exactly, if everyone is rich, we call that an inflation.

[rory_20_uk]

Yup. And?????? I'm not saying it's a good thing, but please provide a model that works in the current global economy. Higher wages to the lower rungs and less to the top = a worsening brain drain and probably lower profits or higher prices to boot. So, a company that in fact has no ideas and produces goods that no one wants.

bieng a realist I'm going where it's best for myself, and by extension my family. More money doesn't equal happiness, but it does equal a decent school, decent healthcare, a relatively crime free place to live, and above a certain rank increased job security.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I think we are currently too concerned with having money, Rory probablt has good attitude, you need enough money to provide a reasonable quality of life. Unfortunatley far too many people "live to work" these days, making money until they are burned out, rather than "working to live."

I don't want to make enough money in my 20s to retire by the time I'm 50, I'd rather enjoy all the intervening time as much as possible.