How 'broken' is Britain? The Economist says it isn't

[muriel_volestrangler]

And it says it with figures. 2 articles - a shorter editorial, and an article with the details:

Crime, family break-up, drunks and drugs: the Conservatives—and apparently plenty of voters—think that Britain has a “broken society”. Does the claim stand up?

...
Chief among people’s worries is their security. Under Labour, fear of crime climbed until by 2007 it had become the issue that pollsters identified as the main complaint among voters. (Since then worries about the economy have eclipsed all else.) The heightened fears are a puzzle to criminologists, who point out that over the past 15 years Britain has experienced a steady, deep fall in crime. The statistics are notoriously hard to interpret, but according to the British Crime Survey, the Home Office’s most reliable measure though still far from perfect, crime overall has dropped by 45% since its peak in 1995. A big chunk of that fall is owing to reductions in vehicle theft and domestic burglary, for which alarm manufacturers and increased householder vigilance probably deserve as much credit as the police. But violent crime has fallen too. It is now almost half what it was in 1995, and no higher than in 1981 (see chart 1).

Looking more carefully, the big fall in brutality has been in domestic violence, which has dropped by a staggering 70%. (No one is sure why; the best guess is that an improving economy has kept men out of the house and given women enough money to escape if they need to.) Violence at the hands of strangers—the prospect that probably drives fear of crime more than anything else—has fallen by far less, and in fact rose in the most recent reporting period. Robbery has not gone down as much as burglary, perhaps because personal security has not improved in line with domestic security. But it too has been falling.
...
One of the clearest long-term trends relates directly to the Edlington question. Parents have probably never been more worried about their offspring, but the truth is that children seem to be less at risk now than in the past. The number of killings of under-15s has “collapsed” since the 1970s, according to Colin Pritchard of Bournemouth University. Professor Pritchard calculates that in 1974 Britain was the third-biggest killer of children in the rich world. By his reckoning it is now 17th, following a 70% drop in child homicides. To be on the safe side, he did the analysis again, including cases where the cause of death was undetermined; even then the number of cases had halved. He credits closer co-operation between police and social services, which kicked off in a big way in 1979.

Children also seem to be committing fewer serious offences themselves. Martin Narey, a former Home Office big cheese who now runs Barnardo’s, a venerable children’s charity, points out that the number of under-16s being convicted of the gravest offences is at least a third lower than it was in the early 1990s. There are fewer Mary Bells about, not more.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15452867

There's more: the teenage conception rate has been relatively flat since the mid 70s; teenage parents are slightly fewer, due to an increase in abortions; what's changed is the teenagers are less likely to get married. Drinking is up, but smoking is down. The article thinks the main problem is inequality; that's increased, and so some areas and groups are in a worse state than they used to be, even if the countrywide statistics look reasonable. Which isn't what you expect The Economist to be pointing out.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. Don't you think that the right-wing media play up fear of crime

in order to justify police crackdowns?

That certainly seems to be the case here.

[LeftishBrit]

4. I think at the moment it's more an electoral tool to get the Tories into office

Public fear of crime tends to favour the Tories, who are seen as 'tougher' on criminals.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

2. You can look at any newspaper, from any decade of the 20th Century

to find the same old moral panics about family breakdown and the "bad" behaviour of young people.

[LeftishBrit]

3. Things ain't what they used to be - and they never were!

An early 18th century song attributed to Henry Fielding laments that we had all become wimps since the days of Good Queen Bess:

When mighty Roast Beef was the Englishman's food,
It ennobled our brains and enriched our blood.
Our soldiers were brave and our courtiers were good
Oh! the Roast Beef of old England,
And old English Roast Beef!

But since we have learnt from all-vapouring France
To eat their ragouts as well as to dance,
We're fed up with nothing but vain complaisance
Oh! the Roast Beef of Old England,
And old English Roast Beef!...

But now we are dwindled to, what shall I name?
A sneaking poor race, half-begotten and tame,
Who sully the honours that once shone in fame.
Oh! the Roast Beef of Old England,
And old English Roast Beef!

When good Queen Elizabeth sat on the throne,
Ere coffee, or tea, or such slip-slops were known,
The world was in terror if e'er she did frown.
Oh! The Roast Beef of old England,
And old English Roast Beef!...

Oh then we had stomachs to eat and to fight
And when wrongs were cooking to do ourselves right.
But now we're a . . . I could, but goodnight!
Oh! the Roast Beef of Old England,
And old English Roast Beef!'


Earlier, the Old Shepherd in Shakespeare's 'Winters Tale' would clearly have liked to slap ASBOs on the youth of that time:

'I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the
rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry,
stealing, fighting.'