(started this morning – I see David has put in a post, but as this story was still the main lead on Five Live news this evening …)
Of all the lobbyists, “campaigners” and special interest groups in the UK, two get a particularly ready and uncritical hearing from the BBC.
One is the anti-prison lobby – the Howard League and NACRO can always get a Today interview and news coverage – the other the “children’s charities”, today mostly run by unreconstructed 60s and 70s liberals (and also the recipients of massive taxpayer funding – £119 million last year for Barnardo’s – more than half their income. Tax-funded Barnardo campaigns are amplified by the tax-funded BBC. Do we see a pattern here ?).
Barnardo’s, an organisation that in today’s incarnation would make the good doctor turn in his grave, have a new political campaign about to kick off. Hey, man – the kids are cool. Stop dissing them !
And it’s been all over the BBC all day, alomg with no less than four news online items, at least one of which is a work of fiction straight from Barnardo’s campaign. But it’s this one, by social affairs editor Kim Catcheside (following in the footsteps of her predecessors Polly Toynbee and Rita Chakrabarti) which strikes me :
“The manners of children are deteriorating… the child of today is coarser more vulgar… than his parents were.”
A leader from the Daily Mail in 2008?
No, that was CG Heathcote, the stipendiary magistrate for Brighton in 1898, giving evidence to an inquiry on juvenile delinquency.
CG Heathcote is quoted by the criminologist Geoffrey Pearson, the author of the influential book, Hooligan.
Hmm. Daily Mail, eh ? No “twitching net curtains“, Kim ?
By an unbelieveable coincidence, that same quote is used in today’s Guardian by … the criminologist Geoffrey Pearson.
Catcheside’s piece is a textbook example of what I call the liberal “Myth of the Myth of the Golden Age“. But she’s right that the Pearson book is influential, although it was restating the themes of an earlier and equally influental work, Stanley Cohen’s 1973 “Folk Devils and Moral Panics”.
There’s a wonderful and inadvertant parallel with Pearson’s book in Catcheside’s piece.
Campaigners for the rights of children blame the media for whipping up hostility to children. According to the chief executive of Barnardo’s, Martin Narey, the British public overestimates the amount of crime committed by young people. “The real crime is that this sort of talk and attitude does nothing to help those young people who are difficult, unruly or badly behaved,” he says.
But the statistics show that while negative attitudes to children may be exaggerated, they are based on fact. In England and Wales, children aged 10 to 17 are far more likely to be arrested than adults. The most recent figures show that they account for a quarter of all arrests. Children and young people under 21 account for two thirds of arrests.
So the message is that “the British public overestimates the amount of crime committed by young people“. And the actuality is that two-thirds of arrests are of people under 21 ! While there might not be a 1-1 correlation between being arrested and being a criminal, this isn’t good supporting evidence for Mr Narey’s claims.
Just so with the Pearson book, which has been pretty comprehensively demolished by the sociologist Norman Dennis in his book “Cultures and Crimes” (Chapter 4, pdf)
Pearson argues in his 1983 book that the Edwardian and interwar periods were as violent as or more violent than the late twentieth century. Yet the statistics show that there were only 122 felonious woundings and other acts endangering life in 1927. (Between 1900 and 1927 the national figure for felonious woundings and other acts endangering life had more than halved.) Between 1969 and 1978, the period immediately preceding Pearson’s research for his book, the figure rose by 1,800, i.e. by seven times the total for 1900, and by 15 times the total for 1927.
Or (there’s lots more) :
The case of street robbery is particularly important for his thesis, he says, ‘because this is commonly the most sensitive area for registering public concern about crime and violence’. There is ‘ample evidence’, he writes, of ‘sharp increases in crimes of this nature’ in the interwar period. The ‘ample evidence’ he adduces is an increase of 90 per cent in the number of ‘bag snatches’ in London between 1925 and 1929. The fact that there was ‘an insubstantial public reaction’ to these figures at the time shows that substantial public reactions at the end of the twentieth century to much the same thing reflected merely a higher propensity in the later period for respectable people to panic about their personal safety and the security of their property.The rise was 90 per cent. Pearson does not say what the actual numbers were in the source to which he explicitly refers. The numbers were an increase from 66 bag snatches in the whole of London in 1925 to 127 in 1929. No numbers could show more decisively that London in the 1920s was a low-crime city compared with London today. In the whole of the ‘high’ year of 1929 there were 127 snatches. In the first half of 2003 the average number of snatches each month was 1,678.
Pearson’s most famous work is a mixure of omission, anecdote, selection and exaggeration hung on one observable fact – that throughout history people have tended to idealise the past. Yet it was, and is, influential – because people wanted to believe it. Kim Catcheside’s one of them. And by the way, Kim, if Barnardo’s are “campaigners for the rights of children“, whose rights are NACRO and the Howard League campaigning for ? It would be nice to hear you say it straight out.
Then perhaps this ANTI BBC YOUTUBE VIDEO will get an uncritical response here.
After all, the BBC are masters of the one sided (New Labour) argument on a daily basis.
That pdf contains lots of potentially interesting graphs but none of them show up for me. Can anyone else see them?
Laban – thank you for this post. This is the type of thing we need to keep doing: detailed analysis, facts, figures, clear examples of lop-sided reporting, backed with solid evidence.
Much more convincing than some of the rhetorical stuff: “imagine what the BBC would say if it were muslims or Democrats doing that / you can just tell how much the BBC love Putin and Marx and Bin Laden and Hitler and Castro from the lighting in the photos they use” etc.
Excellent work and informative too.
A key point relating to the Barnardo’s thing was that kids commit 10% of crimes but are ‘blamed’ for 50%.
Two points regarding this – firstly is that 10% of recorded crimes or 10% of incidents reported by the British Crime Survey or 10% of solved crimes (if you haven’t solved it how do you know who did it?)? Kids by definition are less likely to engage in minor motoring offences and complex financial fraud. Using offensive language, disturbing the police, criminal damage, minor theft are all crimes but probably don’t show up on official records because they’re (ahem) “victimless” or the police can’t be arsed or long suffering members of the public can’t be bothered reporting them.
Second, even if you assume that the figures are correct surely the emphasis should be on kids doing more for their PR than on adults realising the error of their ways. Stop swearing on busses, stop being loudly and casually misogynistic, homophobic, foul mouthed and generally abusive, stop scratching buses up, stop hanging around outside shops chucking things about, stop dressing like twats, stop sounding like monosyllabic morons, start showing some speck of interest in authority and people might stop assuming that you’re stabbing people every time you leave their sight.
Does anyone know the ages Bernados is referring to for children?
What annoys me the most is when people bang on about rights.
I wish these same people would wake up and realise that there are NO rights without responsibilities.
Actually Id go even further than that and say you have no rights. What you really have are priviledges handed down to you by the courts and the Government.
And as with all things, priviledges can be taken away or added to…but you dont have any automatic rights.
Mailman
The frigtening aspect of all this youth crime and anti-social behaviour is no-one is going to help if you are on the receiving end of it.
Having spent more than seven years trying to get our own situation resolved my neighbours and I are no further forward. Our Labour councillors have opposed every measure that has been agreed to deal with this problem and counci officers have backtracked on every agreed measure in order to accomodate the councillors.
The police make all the right noises but wouldn’t even attend when my daughter was assaulted by drunken yobs.A friend had a brick thrown through his car window by a yob. He chaased and caught him and marched him round to his parents house but no-one was in (down the pub) so had to let him go.Three hours later the police turned up at my friends house and arrested him so he now has a police record for his trouble.
Cockney
I believe the police “solve” about 5% of recorded crime. As you say much low level “crime” is not reported and it is recorded low level crime that is largely unsolved. If Barnados figures are for those apprehended by the police they must only be the tip of the iceberg. It would probably be fair to say at the same time that a large proportion of juvenile “offenders” are probably the perpetrators of more than one “crime”.
I think it was Superintendant Mallon? at Middlesborough who initiated a zero tolerance policy there with commenable results in reduction of low level crime which would doubtlessly have fed through to a general crime reduction if continued. I for one have never understood why that was stopped – any offers anyone?
I believe the police “solve” about 5% of recorded crime.
I think you are very wrong. Here in Scotland, Police solve (clear up) 48% of recorded crime.
Either Taggart is a lot smarter than Morse, or your figures are way out.
Today’s figures also indicate the clear-up rate for all recorded crimes in 2007/08 is up slightly at 48%.
The clear-up rate in 2007/08 for non-sexual crimes of violence is higher than in 2006/07, increasing from 60% to 62%.
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Recorded-crime-rate-falls-to.4541963.jp
Gerald
It was Ray Mallon (now Mayor of Middlesborough) very successful & popular with the public. However I understand police top brass & local politicians did not like him. He was suspended and investigated over around 5 years and nothing ever proved. Perhaps someone from the area can give more detail.
Guardinistas would use that quote from the magistrate of 1908 for their proof that crime has always been high.In their heart of hearts they know otherwise though.
A little old lady might one day,after a lifetimes law abiding existence, shoplift. She`s gone downhill (for that one moment).
A drug dealing gangsta murderer might not commit an offence in one year. His stock goes up (temporarily).
So the 1908 magistrate could be talking about standards that are going slipping from a high, but could a 2008 magistrate start from the same high standards?
JH
If 50% of low level crime were “cleared up” (definition please) many more people would be quite happy to report shop lifting in their shop, broken windows, vandalism et al, always assuming you can get an answer and the crime recorded. In my county they operate a filtering system such that many “reported” crimes do not have any action taken at all on the basis of detection probability. Those on this site who have been reporting their experiences of living in more “difficult” locations do not seem to recognise a 50% clear up rate.
I believe the BBC reported today the English? detection rate for violent crime was now down to less than 50% so if that serious offence is only at that level and they are not bothering to investigate many other reports I struggle with a 50% overall rate.
Could I recommend the book by David Fraser “A Land Fit for Criminals: An Insider’s View of Crime, Punishment and Justice in the U.K. It can be heavy going but is a book which, after reading, will leave you with a somewhat healthy scepticism of the “official” view of crime and justice in this country.
JH 2:18
Do you believe the Government’s statistics on crime, or anything else for that matter ?
Gerald Brown | 18.11.08 – 4:31 pm
If 50% of low level crime were “cleared up” (definition please)
A crime or offence is regarded as cleared up where there exists a sufficiency of evidence under Scots law, to justify consideration of criminal proceedings notwithstanding that a report is submitted to the procurator fiscal.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2002/04/1502
Grant | 18.11.08 – 4:37 pm
Fair point.
JH 5:01
Can I assume that you are, like me, a Scot posting from North of the Border ?
Anyway, we do a good line in “fair points” up here, with a few exceptions !
JH
Thank you. I wonder if your PFs are as useless as the CPS down here in terms of not taking cases to court, but it obviously does not harm the “cleared up” statistics, just means that justice is much less often seen to be done!
What henryflower said.
Also, some defenders of the indefensible might think that this is just another example of the BBC supporting children’s charities – what’s wrong with that?
However, this particular issue is more of an example of the BBC advocating a particular idea, not for a charitable cause. This looks like the BBC is attempting to change the public’s attitude in the interests of social cohesion (as they define it).
Gerald 5:44
I would like to think that our PFs are better, just as I would like to think that the “Scottish” legal system is better. But, as we say here ” Ah hae ma doots ” !
Of all the lobbyists, “campaigners” and special interest groups in the UK, two get a particularly ready and uncritical hearing from the BBC.
Oh hang on Laban. You’ve forgotten “Liberty”, in particular their omnipresent mouthpiece, Shami Chakrabarti. I do believe, as if she didn’t get enough free publicity and podium time as she liked already, she was on Desert Island Disks recently.
Oh, and did you catch Yasmin Alibi (what’s hers?) Brown on Jeremy Vine yesterday, using the excuse of Baby P to lay into the family? Well of course families are weak Yasmin. Your crew have been kicking the hell out of marriage and the family, out of morality, decency and self reliance for the last forty years. What did you expect?
Hugh 7:18
I did catch Shami on Desert Island discs. By her choice of music, so should she be judged !
Gerald brown. I have been campaigning on crime issues for over a decade. I believe your 5% is very accurate. Those sent to jail is usually around 5% too so overall criminal removal rate is about 0.25% a year.
Not 50% a year.
if the bbc is cravenly pro-labour, why would they give liberty regular uncritical coverage? liberty are a constant thorn in the government’s side.
Do pay attention, WWL. As has been pointed out here, repeatedly and for several years, the BBC’s centre of gravity is to the Bennite Left of ZaNuLabour. When it criticises the party, it does so from the Left.
So it opposes the govt? the hard left defers to no-one in its loathing of this government. it is not sustainable to say the bbc is hard left and pro-govt.
mikewino, the only voices allowed on the BBC are left (government) and further left (charities, pressure groups etc). How about letting on the BNP, which seems to be doing rather well. They get more votes than the greens
mikewineliberal
I do not seem to have had a reply to my question to you on Get Osborne (save Brown) 17.11.08 10.14.
The BBC is pro-Labour in the context of being the only alternative Government to the hated Conservatives. As you have rightly said before the BBC is biased against the Government on Iraq and Afghanistan but then many (most?) Labour M.P.s are against it but won’t rock the boat,and is always keen to push the liberal social agenda, but even the Labour Party know they can only push the electorate so far before alienating the man on the Clapham omnibus so probably are not prepared to move precipitately in that direction, prefering the many small steps method of the last 11 years. A bit like their taxation policy in fact.
Despite you constant attempts to mention areas of non-alignment of BBC think and Government think as evidence of non-bias I feel you are merely reinforcing the point that the BBC is not IMPARTIAL, which I believe its Charter says it should be.
GB – looking back, I was commenting on the assertion in that article, not in the comments; so: “You have to hand it to the BBC, they are relentless in their opposition of our armed forces participating anywhere in the world where they might make a difference”
my point is if the bbc editorial policy has as its primary aim “saving brown”, it would not, as is also argued here, push a certain view on iraq, and give undue air time to cable and liberty; who are implacably anti-govt.
alan – your boy griffin was on today just. got a soft ride from naughtie in my view.
mikewino, a soft ride about what?
MWL: It’s really quite simple, despite your attempts to make it seem complicated. The BBC “institutionally” occupies a position on the liberal left. Where Labour Government policy coincides with that position, as it does in almost all areas, the BBC sing from Labour’s hymnsheet in a gratuitous way. Where Labour adopts positions that seem like a betrayal of the left, ie – Iraq and Afghanistan – the BBC attacks government policy from the left. When it does so, it quite conspicuously attacks the policy, rather than the Party, always careful to stress to ministers in interviews just how many “of your own Party” oppose the policy.
To suggest that this shows some lack of party political bias is no more credible than suggesting that, because I argued last week with my girlfriend over the amount of TV she watches, I am actually not her partner, do not love her, and am secretly married to the lady living next door.
mwl
Was Alan Griffin in the studio with Red Jim? If so that must have been a close decision at the BBC to have to have paid the taxi fare etc. to get him there and let him enter the premises.
Red Jim was rather deflated by AG’s response to the comments which RJ thought amounted to a threat to harm whoever had released the information. Perhaps he had geared himself up to persue that particular line and struggled a bit thereafter.
Gordon Brown is not as associated with the Iraq war as Blair–he said very little at the time and has subsequently said very little about the war. I suspect that Campbell was responsible for the “45 minute” lie, and that Labour will try and pretend that they are merely reluctant participants.
You mean Nick Griffin? He was soft on Griffin’s disingenuous answer on that point. It’s a pretty clear threat.
Henry Flower – “as it does in almost all areas”. The problem is that’s not true (Trident, 42 days, id cards, iraq, afghanistan, PPL, NHS policy, academy schools, environmental policy, energy policy, third runway, bailing out the city, asylum and immigration policy, vivisection, school league tables, building new prisons, etc etc). Far more coincidence with the Lib Dems, so by your logic that’s who the BBC should be shilling for.
If you want to know the truth about policing, read Insopector Gadget’s (brilliant and eye-opening) book (link here) or the other policing books.
How about letting on the BNP, which seems to be doing rather well. They get more votes than the greens
Allan@Oslo | 18.11.08 – 10:23 pm | #
alan – your boy griffin was on today just. got a soft ride from naughtie in my view.
mikewineliberal | 19.11.08 – 7:48 am | #
As it is pertinent to the way things get pre-shaped by the BBC (choice of 3rd party commentator, etc), going on what was written I’m a little intrigued as to what mindset managed to get from the question posed to ‘your boy…’ being included in the reply.
All I see is Alan asking a question based on a series of facts, which I presume to be accurate as no one has taken issue with them, namely that the BNP (a legitimate political party still?) gets more votes and does rather ‘better’ than others, yet seems poorly represented with airtime, at least for members to articulate their views (If they are odious, then let them suffer the consequences of having uttered them. Banning according to a selective view on what is ‘right’, or in this case perhaps ‘too right’, seems very Orwellian at best, and possibly hugley counter-productive if trying to defend democratic values)
Some obvious counter scenarios are suggested, but having an interest in a protagonist (whose views I may wish to learn as part of a mix, but certainly not be supportive of) getting then converted into them being ‘my boy’ might for some serve to associate independent, but inconvenient curiosity with a ‘side’ that can then be made part of an attempt to create a ‘them & us divide, but is so clunky as to merely put those weighing arguments well offside.
As here, and with a growing amount of BBC ‘opinion’ as ‘news’, which such a technique reflects… curiously enough.
mwl
Thank you for correcting me with regard to Mr Griffins christian name. I can only presume that comes from more reading time of the wide range of newspapers available to you at work – in the newsroom?
I would welcome elucidation as to why revealing the threat of enforcement of a court injunction was a disingenuous answer. The BNP appeared to know that this information had been taken by one or more of the four involved and obtained a court injunction to prevent publication.
I hope you are not letting any bias against the BNP colour your opinion because you do do your best to project a liberal viewpoint (except regarding religious programmes on the BBC of course).
J Kettle
The blog site “The Policeman’s Blog” is to be highly recommended. It basically grew out of the book “Wasting Police Time” by David Copperfield, probably the original expose of the reality of the response policeman’s life and those he has the misfortune to regularly come into contact with. One episode of which has some striking similarities with the existence of “Baby P”.
If you have not read it, I highly recommend it is put on your list for early reading.
Peter | Homepage | 19.11.08 – 1:31 pm
I clicked on your homepage link and was taken to a blogger content warning, suggesting your site is pornographic.
I was expecting something about re-cycling or the advertising biz.
You’d better check that the kids haven’t been up to some practical jokes.
“I wouldn’t be sleeping very well tonight” has a slight whiff of menace about it! not the language one would expect from a mainstream political party “revealing the threat of enforcement of a court injunction”. But i’m happy to admit a dislike of everything the bnp stands for; along with most posters on here I hope.
“…. a dislike of everything the BNP stands for; … ”
Enforcing border security, leaving the EU, deporting illegal immigrants. There are some BNP policies which I support and should be the subject of discussion and action, but the BBC doesn’t let the BNP onto political programs simply because the BBC does not want these matters discussed.
So, mwl, you favour the indigenous population becoming a minority within 80 million people on this island?
So, do you support the BNP or just elements of their policy programme?Peter (see earlier) was annoyed that I assumed you were a supporter. And I’m happy to apologise if you’re not.
mwl – yes, you’re absolutely right! – at a time when the Conservative Party have a lead in the polls, the leftist BBC should split the leftist vote by attacking Labour and shilling for the Lib Dems. Not.
You really don’t get how simple it is, do you? If the Lib Dems were the only leftish party who could keep the Conservatives from power, you bet the BBC would try to help them. They do get a rather disproportionate platform as it is.
Bloody hell I got it wrong again,
That long list of crime numbers I have in front of me is a figment of my imagination.
All residents received a letter from our Police Force(sorry Service)today telling us that crime is down in all areas and it is only our perception of crime that is the problem.
Apologies for this ‘test’.
It seems I can no longer post, at least on this thread (others elsewhere have worked subsequently, so it’s not my system/IP).
Just seeing if it was something I said…er… wrote.
If this works I have no clue what could have caused the system to not even accept it fro preview much less publish.
On balance, looking above, maybe best to duck out anyway.