Part of the government's new policing policy involves the election of police commisioners. The idea is, I imagine, to allow people to hold police commisioners to account for what they see as the shortcomings of the way Law and Order are dealt with in the area.
There is a big flaw in this argument and it is one that not many people want to face up to and that is that people are arseholes of the first order. An individual person is fine. Put a group of persons together and you have an idiot. We have known this for many years, Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds was published in 1841. It documented through several examples how people bandied together become an irrational mob. My favourite quote of the book is 'Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one'
What happens when you have such a mob electing somebody to office to deal with crime ? Do you think it is possible that anybody who will be prepared to stand on a public platform and try to defend rational policing that actually reduces crime. Of course not. We are going to have people competing to be the most populist. So we will have more irrational policing like putting policemen on the beat when it has been proved beyond measure how ineffective this is. We will have them promising to further criminalise young people and bring them into the criminal justice system when it has beeen proven that if that is where you place young people that is where they remain.
Having said that if they can lock up the little shit who stole my I-Pod and Sat Nav from my car two years ago then they'll get my vote.
Oh and talking of stupid people if you haven't heard this you've missed a treat
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