I MUST STOP DOING THIS

I wrote down some thoughts a couple of days ago.

 

Wednesday 22^nd March 2023:

The World at One repeatedly  suggested that just because the term institutional racism was used it did not mean that all officers were racist. Indeed it does not, but what is does indicate is that most of the Metropolitan police officers are racist, homophobic and misogynistic. If that were not the case than the investigators could not have found the ‘institution’ to be racist. homophobic and misogynistic. The climate created by the majority is surely what gives rise to the findings. To soft soap and suggest otherwise, as if to suggest things are not as bad as it looks, is hardly accurate reporting and clearly biased or some attempt at face saving.  Ms Montague seemed keen to pursue the line that the public should not think that all police officers are like that. Again, perhaps some are not, but clearly most of them are. It is not the first time the institution has been found to be institutionally racist. It has clearly been like that for decades. Get a grip and give the facts and the history of previous findings and stop soft soaping what is a national disgrace. The Stephen Lawrence case prompted enquiry, the Macpherson Report 1999, and was clearly a complete waste of time; as was the Scarman Report in 1981.

 

Successive United Kingdom Governments have persistently failed to deal with the increasing deterioration of the police forces in this country. It may well be the same elsewhere, but this is a small Island Nation by comparison to other countries, with a proud history of liberal democracy and respect for the rights of the individual citizen. It has embraced and indeed nurtured the concept of the duty of care and the rule of law. It has trusted its institutions to predominantly do the right thing.

 

That its policing and home security should have been so neglected and allowed to fester in the hands of so many deeply worrying individuals, who feel they can run roughshod over the population with impunity, is extremely serious as well as dangerous. The two recent horrific examples now in prison must be just the tip of the iceberg. The findings of the latest investigation are clear evidence of that.

 

This country cannot allow yet another report, whose findings are even more horrific than the last, gather dust, as before, in the in-trays of so many ministers of the Crown. Don’t just publish reports, do something. It must not be left in the hands of any member of the Police Force. Drastic measures are required and the most arduous task of recruiting and training officers suitable for the job must begin. Being a Police Officer with sufficient knowledge and skill to earn the trust of the public is probably one of the most difficult jobs in the world. To qualify to do this requires very extensive education, exercise and training. To be sufficiently mentally and physically astute is but the beginning.

 

As with a lot of aspects of our lives we seem to treat our mental and physical well-being as something separate from the environment we live in.   We need clean and safe streets. We need clean and secure places for healing. We tend to treat street cleaners, bin men, hospital staff and police officers with the same casual acceptance of their presence without taking the time to really notice just what they are doing in keeping the environment outside our front doors healthy, clean, safe and secure.  They have been woefully overlooked and consequently some have become resentful and others have gone off the rails. The state of the metropolitan police is an example of putrefaction as a result of such neglect. The lack of maintenance of our trusted civil guardians has descended into dry rot and must be drastically cut out and treated with a fresh supply of the appropriate disinfectants. 

 

Friday 24 March 2023:

I find a piece in the Guardian (Thurs 23 March, 2023) by Owen Jones that puts the concerns very well:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/23/met-police-uk-radical-alternatives-policing

 

In 1969/1970 after a short experience at HMP Brixton, I joined a small group that was just starting out under the title RAP (Radical Alternatives to Prison). I do not believe the founders of the group had any actual experience of prison. They did not last very long but they were very willing souls. There were some ex-prisoners who had joined the group and the meetings were a sort of AA like gathering of people telling stories of their personal experience of being detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. All of it heartfelt and emotive, but unfortunately little in the way of what might constitute radical alternatives to incarceration.

 

The idea of detention and restraining individuals from freedom of movement goes back a very long way. The need and reasons for doing so and by whom are equally ancient. From one person exercising power over another, or over many others, to groups of individuals imposing their collective authority over others, the concept of detention has been prominent. Its primary function is to maintain order. There is an interesting scene from the Kubrick film Spartacus with script by Dalton Trumbo (one of the Hollywood 10) which says it very well.

Be that as it may, more democratic societies, and in particular liberal democracies, have struggled with the idea of imprisonment. Is it purely a means of maintaining order and as a deterrent to anyone seeking to upset that order through criminal or generally disruptive activity?  Indeed, we have a government that seeks to criminalise some disruptive activity so as to facilitate the use of imprisonment to maintain order. This government sees the threat of prison as a deterrent. It is meant to put off the individual from transgression for fear of punishment and retribution.

 

Some might see imprisonment not just as punishment and retribution but as a form of punishment leading to rehabilitation. In other words the transgressor is made liveable with, or house broken, restored to the order of society.  They can thus be made safe to return to freedom.

 

The problem is that in the thousands of years where prison and the harshest of regimes have been used as deterrent to human activity and the maintenance of order, some people keep popping up and coming back for more, and sometimes leading to the establishment of a new order. Throughout history we have examples of aggression and repression leading to a firmer resolve on the part of the subjects of that aggression.  Various revolutions 1776. 1789, 1917, the blitz 1940 and the present Ukraine.

 

Indeed prison and the harshest of punishments have failed abysmally in deterring people from theft and chicanery as well as from violence.  If it had been successful we would not be having this repetitive conversation.

 

So what are the radical alternatives to prison in a liberal democracy? Sadly, there are some very dangerous people who really do need to be detained for the safety of the public. How to deal with them and, maybe, allow them to return to society is an extremely difficult problem. I do not pretend to know the answer. There are many more miscreants, however, for whom prison is clearly not the answer. Dealing with them, so as to change their behaviour toward their fellow humans, is an equally difficult problem. It is not a matter of catching a thief, but stopping the thievery altogether. Given the amount of skulduggery in the current United Kingdom, and no doubt in every country round the world, there seems little prospect of a universal eureka moment where every villain stops in their tracks and says “I must stop doing this”.

 

Just think what would happen if Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin. Alexander Lukashenko, Boris Johnson, Suella Braverman, Victor Orban, Min Aung Hlaing, Jacob Rees-Mogg and many others woke up one morning and decided “I must stop doing this” and did just that?

 

More of this anon ....