Tony Blair and Crime Preventation - Essay Example

Running head: How has Tony Blair been tough on crime How has Tony Blair been tough on crime By ___________________ Introduction This essay is a brief overview of how and what measures Tony Blair has taken in crime prevention and to what extent he is successful. What are the views of General public for him and how up till now he has managed to control the rate of crime The points that are discussed in this essay are somehow related to Blair's Government, as he promised to control the increasing rate of crime with a slogan, "being tough on crime", so let us assess as to what extent he went along with his slogan. Schmalleger writes regarding Blair's Government "A 1997 election victory by Labour Party Prime Minister Tony Blair may soon produce substantial change in the English Criminal Justice System. Blair favours the creation of sentencing guidelines for major offences and stricter punishment for repeated offenders involved in serious crimes. Blair also supports the creation of an anti-drug czar position in his cabinet and wants a total ban on the ownership of handguns by civilians". (Schmalleger Frank, 1995, p. 241) Tough On Crime In my opinion being tough on crime means to handle crime events in such an effective and efficient manner that not only reduce crime rate but also it works in favour of the general citizens of the country. They feel protected and secure in the reign of such Government. This is only possible if crime is handled and eradicated at the grass root level and it is obvious that to handle crime at such elementary level the Government needs to know the real causes and factors behind crime. With respect to UK crime with the Government of Tony Blair, Adele Horin writes in his article of September 7, 2002 "Tough on crime means tough on the causes of crime. If instead of stealing the policies from Tony Blair, Bob Carr had paid half the attention to the causes of crime as he paid to the crackdown on criminals, NSW would be better off". He continues, "We got more jails, more inmates, more police and a higher proportion of convicted offenders sent to jail. And through it all crime continued to rise, according to reports of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research". (Horin Adele, 7 Sept 2002) In 1994, Tony Blair promised to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime but according to Telegraph Speakers "after weeks of criticism on the growing impact of human rights legislation, Tony Blair has admitted that his government has failed to produce a criminal justice system that people can trust". (Telegraph Speakers, 15 May 2006) Now let us examine through various case studies and highlight the factors and causes of crime growth, what are the circumstances, which caused Tony Blair to admit his failure in reducing crime. On Dec 28, 2005 BBC in accordance with the BBC News, "Ian Matthews aged 19 was punished for angering his neighbours by playing football at late night. His offence was that he damaged some property by kicking football, although unintentionally he was ordered to pay the cost of 500 pounds from ASBO along with the ban of playing football at late night for three years". (BBC news, Dec 28 2005) Here I agree with Watson Steve, "After all, today's street footballer could be tomorrow's terrorist". (Watson, Jan 16 2006) This is what is happening in the current era of Blair who promised to "being tough on crime". If this is the outcome of Blair's government, who is going to reveal the real terrorists We can see the daily growing percentage of crime in UK, the false promises have given the citizens nothing but insecurity, the killers and rapists are on the loose, even they enjoy the benefit of real freedom provided under the current scenario of Government. As they are aware of the fact, in past they were feared at least to some extent, but today they know they will not be accounted to anyone. They have the real license to commit any crime; after all, the innocent is always blamed and sentenced. Another case followed by ASBO according to BBC news is "Marion Beresford, 48, from the Partick area, was sentenced to 40 days by Glasgow Sheriff Court for flouting an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo). Beresford was first served with the order in June 2004 after complaints about loud music blaring from her flat. She was finally taken to court in October this year but has only just been sentenced. She will spend Christmas and New Year behind bars. In court, the sheriff said that she had rendered the Asbo meaningless". (BBC news, Dec 23 2005) If this is really justice and what Tony Blair had promised of 'getting tough on crime', the citizens should seek such government who instead of getting tough on crime, should be getting soft on crime. In the light of the above cases it is evident to what extent Blair's government has been serious in detecting criminals. Although Blair has done every effort in formulating laws to implement but unfortunately all are implemented to innocent citizens and the offender is always set free or never caught. According to The Friday Thing, 19 May 2006, Blair said: "The problem of crime can be subject to lurid reporting or undue focus on terrible but exceptional cases. He's right, of course, but coming from a man who said in 1993 that the murder of two-year old James Bulger by two ten year-old boys had been the ugly manifestation of a society that is becoming unworthy of the name, you have to wonder about his motives. The freakish once-in-a-generation murder of a toddler by other children in 1993, according to Blair, was symptomatic of the dystopian nightmare of Britain under Tory Government. And yet he says any such horrors occurring nowadays are blown of all proportion by a prurient media, stoking public fears. Fears, which, despite Blair's recognition of media overkill, must be addressed by far-right appeasing, headline-monopolising, and fag-packet brainstorming". If at a glimpse we analyse the current political scenario in the era of Blair's government we would come to know that right from the false promises made by Blair to the mistake of war against Iraq, Tony Blair has done nothing but uttering valueless words. Words that he gave to UK citizens were never fulfilled. In the week of July 25, 2000 when Blair wrote an apology letter for the sexual abuse 'Okinawans'' women had suffered at the hands of American soldiers, it seemed as if he is always at the back to encourage crime, rather than to demolish it. It was at that time the "Blair government was caught up in a controversy surrounding the embarrassing leakage of two high-level memos, written by the Prime Minister suggesting a number of policy initiatives designed to combat the widespread perception that New Labour was out of touch". (Harper's Magazine, 2006) In 2003 British Prime Minister Tony Blair addressed the United States Congress and predicted that history will forgive him even if weapons of mass destruction are never found in Iraq. He received 19 standing ovations; after the first one he responded: "This is more than I deserve and more than I'm used to, frankly." (Harper's Magazine, 2006) At and after the General Election of 1992 the same political imperatives spread to the Labour Party, unwilling to leave the law and order card solely in the hands of their opponents. "Under new leadership, it was Tony Blair who succeeded the veteran Roy Hattersley as Shadow Home Secretary; Labour adjusted its traditional libertarian stance and style of political discourse on crime and punishment to suit the hardening popular mood" (Windlesham, 1987, p. 40). Blair coined a slogan, "tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime" at that time, which helped his party to regain lost ground in what had previously been one of the safest Conservative-held territories. So, it is also evident that the slogan 'being tough on crime' was just a political agenda in order to gain the trust of public, the adroit wording worked out and Tony Blair gained success in achieving the trust of those who relied upon him in true sense, in other words the innocent were looking at him as if perhaps this time, Blair would be the one to fulfil his promises: On other hand his success enabled Labour to compete in the rhetorical display of toughness, "while recognizing the context in which criminal offending takes place. Moreover, in terms of party politics the addendum left ample scope for attacking the Government's record on unemployment, homelessness, and other social conditions, which could be presented as contributory causes of crime". (Windlesham, 1987, p. 40) "When faced with intractable and deeply rooted problems of deviant behaviour over little direct control, legislators, and the governments, tend to fall back on the one thing they can do, which is to legislate. This may explain the parallel development of the steady growth over four decades in the incidence and severity of offending in UK political era, and the greater frequency of Criminal Justice Acts. Whereas there were five such Acts in the thirty-five years between 1947 and 1982 (and a Criminal Law Act in 1977 which contained provisions on the powers of the courts and penalties), the seven years from 1987 to 1994 yielded the same number of substantive Criminal Justice Acts for England and Wales". (Windlesham, 1987, p. 40) The debate demonstrated the lack of unanimity over what the objectives of criminal justice legislation should be. Echoing the theme of the famous 'Back to Basics', it was declared that the measure rested on basic, common-sense principles: that protecting the public was the first job of Government; that criminals should be held responsible for their actions; and that the police should be given the powers needed to catch criminals. (Back to Basics, 1993) The aim was to provide the country with the most effective system of criminal justice, which it was possible for a government to provide. Had Blair followed the basic principles of crime prevention, he would not confronted to those political dilemmas, which he is facing today. Effectiveness was the catchword: "Once Blair said, "this Bill and the other measures that we are putting in place will achieve the most comprehensive and effective framework that it is possible to devise to prevent crime, to enable the police more effectively to catch criminals and to enable the courts more effectively to convict them and to deal with them when they have been convicted". If modifying the right of silence was so crucial an objective for a more effective criminal justice system, how was it that since the changes introduced in Northern Ireland in 1988, although crime had been rising, both the number of prosecutions and the number of convictions as a percentage of prosecutions had dropped Although not proof absolute, that situation was hard to reconcile with the claim that similar reform of the right of silence in England and Wales was required to get more criminals prosecuted or convicted". (Back to Basics, 1993) "In Feb 2004, Tony Blair authorised an investigation into pre-war intelligence failures in response of which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that he did not recall British Prime Minister Tony Blair's pre-war claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes". (Harper's Magazine, 2006) The most amazing thing is that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, also refrained from remembering it. Despite of the false hopes given to general public, somehow when on May 6, 2005 Tony Blair once again selected as Prime Minister, public went hopeless. It is often said that Blair was the one who outraged the left wing of the Labour Party in 1989 when in 1988 he entered the Shadow Cabinet and later promoted at Shadow Employment Secretary announced the decision of the change of Labour Party's Support on employment law. According to BBC of 7 May 2006, "Tony Blair is the victim of a left wing plot to oust him as prime minister, Home Secretary John Reid has said". (Blair Target, 2006) According to Williams Gary, on May 15, 2006 "Tony Blair is the untrusted component in the system. He says one thing and does another or nothing. His government has produced a blizzard of laws whose net effect is to criminalize those people it is easiest to catch - the (previously) law-abiding middle class. I note that the judge in the Hijacker's case complained about the incompetence of the prosecution - we've heard this before! The noise about human rights is a carefully planned distraction from the real issue. We just need competent government - not more laws". (Telegraph Speaker's Corner, 2006) This is what people think of Blair as a person being tough on crime! Conclusion 'Being tough on crime' was never that much easy before Tony Blair's Government. Apart from the fake promises and hollow words that he gave to the public, his era has done nothing for UK, but encourages criminals to keep on with their activities. The truth is that he has done nothing to prevent crime or unemployment in UK, other than uttering a few speeches and passing some laws for the innocent to follow. References ASBO ban for teenager footballer, Dec 28 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/4564168.stm Back to Basics, Parl. Debates, HC, 233 (6th ser.), col. 31, 18 Nov. 1993. Blair Target, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4981532.stm Harper's Magazine, Blair Tony http://www.harpers.org/TonyBlair.html Horin Adele, September 7 2002. "Getting Tough on crime Let's get real" Accessed on June 4, 2006 from Schmalleger Frank, 1995. "Crime and Justice". Telegraph Speaker's Corner http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtmlview=BLOGDETAIL&grid=P30&blog=yourvi ew&xml=/news/2006/05/15/ublview15a.xml Telegraph Speakers' Corner, May 15, 2006. Read More