"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Less Guns, More Crime

by Lee

When you remove from yourself the burden of providing for your own protection, and empower the state to do so for you, this is what happens.

The extent of street crime in London is revealed in new figures showing there are 164 muggings in the capital every day.

A report by independent watchdogs shows that, although street crime has come down from its record high levels of early 2002, it is still higher than at any other time in recent history.

It will say that the massive effort to reduce muggings and robberies, involving hundreds of thousands of hours of police time, has produced only a 15 per cent reduction in London.

Scotland Yard figures show that Lambeth is the worst of the 32 boroughs for street crime and that, per head of population, Richmond-is the least dangerous.

The full report - published tomorrow by Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary, Probation and Prisons - is the first independent evaluation of the street crime initiative announced by Tony Blair and Home Secretary David Blunthem a valuable asset they can easily sell.

It is expected to show that the first six months of the police campaign against street crime - when officers got out of their cars and went on the beat in mugging hotspots - produced a steady fall to an average of 163 muggings a day. But there was a rise in the next six months, leading to the average for the year being 164.

So much for Michael Moore’s theories about how socialism and gun control are cures for violence.  The streets of London are a far more dangerous place than the streets of the most armed American societies. This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged on this subject (see here) and it damn sure won’t be the last.

If the UK feels that the solution to gun violence is to ban guns, then it logically follows that passing a law against muggings will stop them as well.  Unfortunately it appears that mugging is already against the law.  And it doesn’t appear that the London police are doing that good a job enforcing that law, anyway.

Fewer than one in 10 street robberies in London end with someone being charged or cautioned, the worst figure in the country. And, despite the rise in the clearup rate, the fall in numbers of street crimes meant fewer crimes were classified as cleared up and fewer muggers went to prison in 2002-3 than in 2001-2.

So, less than 10% of the 164 daily muggings will be solved.  That means that if you are a criminal you have a bettern than 90% chance of getting away with it.  And with a totally unarmed population, you have a 100% chance of your victims not being able to defend themselves.

Nothing like the price of the illusion of safety, is there?

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