Our failing state prefers to punish the law-abiding majority rather than criminals.
The police, local councils, HMRC: all seem to find it easier to go after honest citizens than real offenders
The notion of the police investigating crimes ought not to be front-page news; however, this is British policing, where “dog bites man” is the new “man bites dog”. The Home Secretary Suella Braverman has instructed forces to “investigate every theft”, including supposedly “low-level” crimes like burglaries and bicycle and phone theft, as if this were a novel idea.
Meanwhile, the new Met chief, Sir Mark Rowley, has warned his officers against getting drawn into political causes, and to stick to the job in hand. “If people don’t believe we operate without fear or favour,” he says, “that is pretty fatal to us more than pretty much anybody else and that is why … we have to be tougher on that.” That such things even need saying signals much deeper problems of competence and confidence in UK policing.
Though it will take more than another flurry of headline-grabbing announcements to rebuild public trust, at least they have recognised that there is a problem. Few could fail to notice a central disconnect in how the state treats the law-abiding majority versus how it treats criminals and wrong-doers. The former are constantly punished in the most efficient way imaginable. The latter are too often let off scot-free. Meanwhile, forces are intruding into areas that most people would scarcely consider criminal at all.
Among numerous recent examples; the pro-life activists arrested for praying silently 150 yards away from an abortion clinic, and the many individuals investigated for liking the wrong tweet or expressing views deemed “offensive” on social media. Simultaneously wildly sensitive and jack-booted on the ground, police forces seem to approach their jobs with all the emotional continence of a menstruating rhinoceros.
Sometimes you even get your collar felt for condemning such overreach; a Conservative councillor was recently arrested and held in custody for nine hours for an alleged hate crime, after retweeting a video criticising police treatment of a Christian street preacher, who was wrongfully arrested in 2019.
Compare such overkill with forces’ almost total lack of interest in a swathe of crimes. But perhaps this should come as no surprise; it’s easier to hound the lawful who you know will play ball, than it is to go after the genuinely violent, who won’t.
Earlier this month, West Yorkshire police dispatched no fewer than seven officers to drag a terrified autistic teenager from her home on suspicion of a “homophobic public order offence”. Her supposed crime? Pointing out that a police officer “looked like her lesbian nana”. Extreme examples, perhaps, but scarcely isolated incidents when the average citizen now has such a dysfunctional relationship with the state in even its most localised, mundane form.
How many of us have tales of local councils’ bully-boy tactics when administering fines and speeding tickets? I was recently handed a £200 Fixed Penalty Notice for failing to dispose of rubbish in the proper way. Having taken some cardboard to the outsize waste disposal unit near my flat, only to find the bins overflowing, I’d left my flattened boxes directly next to them, thinking this would suffice. A minor infraction, yet I was fined as if I’d dumped a mattress in the middle of the road, or left piles of industrial waste lying in a heap (and believe me, there’s plenty of that in my neighbourhood).
It almost pays not to be law-abiding. Had I, with sufficient malice aforethought, ripped off the address label from the cardboard, I’d have got away with my “crime”; yet trying to put it in the right place earned me a penalty. The council won’t empty the bins promptly; but they will certainly fine you for littering. It is invariably the low hanging fruit of least resistance.
If only every area of the state operated so effectively. If nothing else, it’s proof that they can be speedy when they want to be. A pothole? Forget it. A parking fine, or a few pieces of errant cardboard, and suddenly the doziest council worker is transformed into the SAS of small-scale debt collection. Or contrast the soul-destroying experience of contacting HMRC with their speed in imposing penalty fines. It’s as if the only time the state manages to function is when it gets the opportunity to inconvenience people, or extract money from them. Then its agents come down on you like a ton of bricks (on a non-health and safety compliant building site).
Stealing a laptop has no consequences, yet trying to report your stolen laptop involves yawning aeons of wasted time. The Kafkaesque process of filing a theft report is like a cruel and unusual extension of the original punishment; nothing will come of it, no one will care. The Apple service “find my iPhone” affords users the uniquely postmodern hell of watching their stolen electronic devices make their way across the country, tracking their locations in real time. Meanwhile, the police insist there’s nothing they can do, even when presented with the identity of the criminal, or the exact address where the pickpocketed belongings are being held. Police inaction is making vigilantes of us all.
Particular problems bedevil the countryside. When it comes to rural theft, ambulance waiting times or broadband issues, practical help from the state is generally thin on the ground. But erect a new wall or lay a patio or fence a couple of inches adrift, and a clipboard-wielding apparatchik of either Defra or the council will inevitably pitch up to tell you what you’re doing wrong.
A friend suffered a campaign of harassment from his local authority thanks to one persistent complainant, outraged that the property – a poultry farm – contained chickens, and those chickens made noise (as chickens will).
All this adds up to an incredibly raw deal for the law-abiding majority – a sense that every interaction with the bureaucratic or administrative state is a negative one. While any infrastructure the public might use deteriorates, enforcement of petty infringements remains in rude health. You can’t get a doctor’s appointment, the state has abdicated its responsibilities for safeguarding private property, and all the while taxes continue to rise.
What, exactly, are we paying for? Government failures ought to be tax-deductible. In fact the opposite is true; we pay through the nose for shoddier service than ever. DT.
