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More mundanely: Sajid Javid, the current home secretary, clearly has ambitions to lead the country. Within the purview of his ministry, he is attempting to pos

More mundanely: Sajid Javid, the current home secretary, clearly has ambitions to lead the country. Within the purview of his ministry, he is attempting to position himself as a decisive strong-man, in contrast to the weak and ineffectual prime minister. His ability to actually reduce crime is hamstrung by years of austerity, which have led to a substantial reduction in the number of police officers and other law enforcement resources. He wants more money, but he doesn't really have the influence to get it. He needs to look tough on crime, but he can't do anything that costs money. Silly legislation is practically free, even if it doesn't achieve much. We've had a worrying increase in knife crime over the past few years. How should the government respond? More police patrols in violence hot spots? Better intelligence on gang-related disputes that might lead to violence? Social work interventions to work with troubled young people who are at risk of becoming involved in violent crime? No, because all of those things would cost money. The government's only substantive policy has been the creation of "knife crime prevention orders", which restrict the civil liberties of people who are suspected of carrying knives with violent intent. It's illiberal, there's no evidence that it'll work, but it looks tough and it doesn't really cost anything. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/24/sajid-javid-youth-knife-crime-orders-human-rights-fears https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/24/sajid-javid-... The internet censorship agenda plays into this perfectly. It costs almost nothing to force foreign internet companies to censor their content, but it looks tough in the headlines. Terrorist attacks? Blame Facebook. Sex offences? Blame Google. Gang crime? Blame Snapchat. It's free, it distracts the newspapers for a couple of days and you get to make some vague but tough-sounding pronouncements without actually being accountable for anything.

arethuza 8y ago
Why they can't just implement the measures that seem to have worked in Scotland to address knife crime seems a mystery - NIH at a political level? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45572691 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45572691
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Scotland? That's in the distant colonies to the north of Watford Gap isn't it? (And near me) As far as Westminster governments are concerned we don't exist, have good ideas or get infrastructure. Just somewhere to park nuclear things and fracking.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    It's not only that you don't exist it's that doing what worked for you would require that these people London has been marginalizing since forever are right and their current approach is wrong. That's a non-starter.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Scottish counties have as much representation in Westminster as any other area, so what's the origin of your grievance here? Fwiw the average MP (in 2009, has it changed) represented 70k people in England, 65k in Scotland, 55k in Wales. Which is probably the reverse of how people "feel" they're represented.
    - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
      Any source you like comparing north/south spending per person on pretty much anything. Not just the relatively recent HS3 vs Crossrail 2, but any and all infrastructure, public transport and services. Which ripples through into health, depression, life expectancy and countless other measures. First one search turned up: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/dec/05/north-continues-to-see-bigger-cuts-in-public-spending-report-finds https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/dec/05/north-contin...
      - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
        But saying "they don't know we exist" suggests a lack of representation, which is very different to spending. I've lived in Wales, Northern England, and Scotland; I'm not at all going to argue with you about spending -- but spending does localise in high population areas, no? I don't really think it's that politicians don't represent their areas, but there is a limited pot of money and it does make business sense to spend where there is a better return. We're not of course running a business: I just don't like representation and spending to be considered coterminous. FWIW, your north-south divide article talks, amongst other things, about life-expectency (LE). I think the thing you notice most in https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/bulletins/healthstatelifeexpectanciesuk/2015to2017 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... (eg figure 5 of whole UK) is that England has higher LE than the other parts of the UK, and that there are a number of northern areas (Ribble, Harogate, York, etc.) with higher LE than any area of Scotland, say. Funnily enough Wales/Scotland get the same issues in miniature, where spending is focussed on the larger population centre in the South. But all areas have representation. Still if you're working poor, you can live anywhere, the spending in that area may be higher, but that doesn't mean you have a better life; it might even be harder if you're living amongst richer people (higher prices for accommodation, etc.). It's one of the things that I've liked about being in the EU, spending is distributed better to poor areas than it would normally be under Tory spending control.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Absolutely NIH. Plus the longstanding problems the Met has with race relations, and the usual underfunded police, schools and social services.
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    Diving into that article, it looks like the Scottish move which correlates best with the reduction (and has the best evidence elsewhere) was a proactive gang intervention-and-redirection program. Basically, <0.5% of the population is usually doing >50% of the murders, so work with them to prevent murders instead of trying to blanket the city with cops. In Glasgow, that targeted about 3,000 people, and reached enough that even non-participants were affected by reduced revenge violence. In London, that would be about 40,000 people.... The program has been tried in bigger cities, but none larger than half London, and it looks like the effect broadly weakens as population grows. (Among other things, people who refuse to participate are only helped if enough people are reached to intervene in reciprocal violence.) That doesn't mean the intervention wouldn't help, but between costs and very weak starting trust, its hard to imagine the Met actually doing it.
    - zimpenfish 8y ago
      Does the Scottish approach differ sufficiently from the "legalise gangs into cultural associations" approach taken in Ecuador[1] that it wouldn't count as "larger than half London"? [1] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/26/18281325/ecuador-legalize-gangs https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/26/18281325/ecuado...
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  The Scottish measures definitely sound sensible, but this sent me off investigating the usual issue with these stories: crime is a wicked problem, and its hard to discern "this intervention reduced crime" from "we kept trying different interventions until crime rates happened to fall". From that article's evidence: In 2004/05 there were 137 homicides in Scotland... By 2016/17 the number had more than halved to 62. Last year this had reduced by a further three to 59... This homicide figure was the joint lowest number of recorded homicide cases for a single 12-month period since 1976. So homicides fell from ~2.5/100k to ~1/100k, which is pretty impressive. But 2004/05 is cited because it was a spike 20% above the 2000-2008 average. London homicides also fell by about 50% over that same period before the recent spiek, without equivalent programs, which raises some questions about whether this was simply demographic. And the population pyramid for Glasgow (where 1/3 of the murders were happening) sort of supports that theory; there's a large population boom-and-hollow, for which the boom was 16-20 during the murder spike and is now into the lower-crime late 20s. London has similar demography, slightly older, with a slightly earlier crime drop. So there's some reason to believe the recent murder spike with no population change is qualitatively different from the mid-2000s peak that Scotland and London both saw. On the other hand, that "further three" claim in the article is a statistically meaningless bounce in a number that's been basically flat for since 2013/14. Almost all of the real-looking change is a murder rate that plummeted from 2008 to 2012. That's actually sort of promising: it means the falloff was faster than the decline in the 16-26 population. And the gang-alternative program mentioned launched in 2009, based on a Boston system which was also followed by a sharp decline in murder rate. Both systems work on redirecting a small population with an extremely high murder rate, so a fast response and then a plateau is actually a very plausible outcome. That technique of proactively engaging gang members has been repeated in many cities at different times, and the statistical evidence for it looks surprisingly strong. I initially suspected that the problem was engaging large networks, since Glasgow and Boston had much lower raw murder rates and at-risk populations than London, but Chicago also showed promising results. Tentatively, it looks like this really was an intervention that caused a major improvement. But I can't find any sign of a comparable program being tried in London - does anyone happen to know one? edit: Chicago had 200% London's raw homicide count, but only 25% of its population. Operation Ceasefire theoretically targets a percentage of the population, independent of lethality, so it may still have been a much lower number than London. As far as I can see, none of this ever caught on in NYC.
Veen 8y ago
This is an interesting and plausible narrative, but there's no reason to think that Javid doesn't believe that reigning in social networks is a genuinely good idea on its merits. Everything else you have said is interesting but irrelevant (when it isn't outright mind reading). Of more importance than the possible motivations and causes is whether this is a good idea, whether it will achieve its aims, and whether those aims are desirable.
fredley 8y ago
The funny thing is Theresa May did exactly the same thing as Home Secretary. Lots of blustery policy about cracking down on the internet with talk of heavy-handed censorship. Creating the 'hostile environment' for migrants that culminated in the Windrush scandal.

arethuza 8y ago

Why they can't just implement the measures that seem to have worked in Scotland to address knife crime seems a mystery - NIH at a political level? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45572691 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45572691

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Scotland? That's in the distant colonies to the north of Watford Gap isn't it? (And near me) As far as Westminster governments are concerned we don't exist, have good ideas or get infrastructure. Just somewhere to park nuclear things and fracking.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  It's not only that you don't exist it's that doing what worked for you would require that these people London has been marginalizing since forever are right and their current approach is wrong. That's a non-starter.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Scottish counties have as much representation in Westminster as any other area, so what's the origin of your grievance here? Fwiw the average MP (in 2009, has it changed) represented 70k people in England, 65k in Scotland, 55k in Wales. Which is probably the reverse of how people "feel" they're represented.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    Any source you like comparing north/south spending per person on pretty much anything. Not just the relatively recent HS3 vs Crossrail 2, but any and all infrastructure, public transport and services. Which ripples through into health, depression, life expectancy and countless other measures. First one search turned up: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/dec/05/north-continues-to-see-bigger-cuts-in-public-spending-report-finds https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/dec/05/north-contin...
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      But saying "they don't know we exist" suggests a lack of representation, which is very different to spending. I've lived in Wales, Northern England, and Scotland; I'm not at all going to argue with you about spending -- but spending does localise in high population areas, no? I don't really think it's that politicians don't represent their areas, but there is a limited pot of money and it does make business sense to spend where there is a better return. We're not of course running a business: I just don't like representation and spending to be considered coterminous. FWIW, your north-south divide article talks, amongst other things, about life-expectency (LE). I think the thing you notice most in https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/bulletins/healthstatelifeexpectanciesuk/2015to2017 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... (eg figure 5 of whole UK) is that England has higher LE than the other parts of the UK, and that there are a number of northern areas (Ribble, Harogate, York, etc.) with higher LE than any area of Scotland, say. Funnily enough Wales/Scotland get the same issues in miniature, where spending is focussed on the larger population centre in the South. But all areas have representation. Still if you're working poor, you can live anywhere, the spending in that area may be higher, but that doesn't mean you have a better life; it might even be harder if you're living amongst richer people (higher prices for accommodation, etc.). It's one of the things that I've liked about being in the EU, spending is distributed better to poor areas than it would normally be under Tory spending control.
pjc50 8y ago
Absolutely NIH. Plus the longstanding problems the Met has with race relations, and the usual underfunded police, schools and social services.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  Diving into that article, it looks like the Scottish move which correlates best with the reduction (and has the best evidence elsewhere) was a proactive gang intervention-and-redirection program. Basically, <0.5% of the population is usually doing >50% of the murders, so work with them to prevent murders instead of trying to blanket the city with cops. In Glasgow, that targeted about 3,000 people, and reached enough that even non-participants were affected by reduced revenge violence. In London, that would be about 40,000 people.... The program has been tried in bigger cities, but none larger than half London, and it looks like the effect broadly weakens as population grows. (Among other things, people who refuse to participate are only helped if enough people are reached to intervene in reciprocal violence.) That doesn't mean the intervention wouldn't help, but between costs and very weak starting trust, its hard to imagine the Met actually doing it.
  - zimpenfish 8y ago
    Does the Scottish approach differ sufficiently from the "legalise gangs into cultural associations" approach taken in Ecuador[1] that it wouldn't count as "larger than half London"? [1] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/26/18281325/ecuador-legalize-gangs https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/26/18281325/ecuado...
Bartweiss 8y ago
The Scottish measures definitely sound sensible, but this sent me off investigating the usual issue with these stories: crime is a wicked problem, and its hard to discern "this intervention reduced crime" from "we kept trying different interventions until crime rates happened to fall". From that article's evidence: In 2004/05 there were 137 homicides in Scotland... By 2016/17 the number had more than halved to 62. Last year this had reduced by a further three to 59... This homicide figure was the joint lowest number of recorded homicide cases for a single 12-month period since 1976. So homicides fell from ~2.5/100k to ~1/100k, which is pretty impressive. But 2004/05 is cited because it was a spike 20% above the 2000-2008 average. London homicides also fell by about 50% over that same period before the recent spiek, without equivalent programs, which raises some questions about whether this was simply demographic. And the population pyramid for Glasgow (where 1/3 of the murders were happening) sort of supports that theory; there's a large population boom-and-hollow, for which the boom was 16-20 during the murder spike and is now into the lower-crime late 20s. London has similar demography, slightly older, with a slightly earlier crime drop. So there's some reason to believe the recent murder spike with no population change is qualitatively different from the mid-2000s peak that Scotland and London both saw. On the other hand, that "further three" claim in the article is a statistically meaningless bounce in a number that's been basically flat for since 2013/14. Almost all of the real-looking change is a murder rate that plummeted from 2008 to 2012. That's actually sort of promising: it means the falloff was faster than the decline in the 16-26 population. And the gang-alternative program mentioned launched in 2009, based on a Boston system which was also followed by a sharp decline in murder rate. Both systems work on redirecting a small population with an extremely high murder rate, so a fast response and then a plateau is actually a very plausible outcome. That technique of proactively engaging gang members has been repeated in many cities at different times, and the statistical evidence for it looks surprisingly strong. I initially suspected that the problem was engaging large networks, since Glasgow and Boston had much lower raw murder rates and at-risk populations than London, but Chicago also showed promising results. Tentatively, it looks like this really was an intervention that caused a major improvement. But I can't find any sign of a comparable program being tried in London - does anyone happen to know one? edit: Chicago had 200% London's raw homicide count, but only 25% of its population. Operation Ceasefire theoretically targets a percentage of the population, independent of lethality, so it may still have been a much lower number than London. As far as I can see, none of this ever caught on in NYC.

Veen 8y ago

This is an interesting and plausible narrative, but there's no reason to think that Javid doesn't believe that reigning in social networks is a genuinely good idea on its merits. Everything else you have said is interesting but irrelevant (when it isn't outright mind reading). Of more importance than the possible motivations and causes is whether this is a good idea, whether it will achieve its aims, and whether those aims are desirable.

fredley 8y ago

The funny thing is Theresa May did exactly the same thing as Home Secretary. Lots of blustery policy about cracking down on the internet with talk of heavy-handed censorship. Creating the 'hostile environment' for migrants that culminated in the Windrush scandal.