of black people are in prison, that is automatically taken as proof of racism in the criminal justice system, and policies that require more incarceration become suspect. If the traditional nuclear family is seen as an institution which enslaves women, policies discouraging single parenthood are unlikely to find favour. Only two conditions can allow such powerful obstructions to be overcome. The first, which is increasingly evident, is the refusal of the general public to tolerate the personal, social and financial cost of continuing as we are. The second is to gain wider understanding of what has been happening and why.
CRIME HAS RISEN
The starting-point for all such discussion must be the rise in crime. For many years Home Office orthodoxy was to deny or at least to minimize it. Attention was, instead, focused on the ‘fear of crime’ which, on the basis of the incidence of recorded offences, was shown to be exaggerated, particularly among such victim groups as the elderly. The unspoken implication was that if commentators talked less about crime, unnecessary fears would subside and the public would feel safer on the streets and in their homes. Within the constraints on government applied by a free society, systematic propaganda of this sort is largely impossible and so rather less is now heard of this patronizing argument. Rightly so, for the only way to diminish fear of crime is to diminish the threat of crime. Where the threat is real — and where the potential victim is frail — fear is a rational and prudent response.
A second and more substantial point which has been made is that the figures for recorded crime suggest a larger increase than has in fact occurred. At first glance, the Home Office British Crime Surveys (BCS) carried out in 1982, 1984, 1988 and most recently 1992, lend some substance to this. The BCS asks 10,000 people directly about their experience as victims of crime, whereas the official crime figures depend upon the number of crimes reported to the police. The recorded crime figures nearly doubled between 1981 and 1991; but the BCS suggests a lower rise of about 50 per cent. The inference is that the willingness to report crime to the police has increased. Particularly in the case of crimes like sexual assault, where police treatment of victims has become much more sympathetic, this is easily explainable. It also suggests a degree of confidence in the police to which the latter’s critics rarely draw attention.
What must also be borne in mind, on the other side of the argument, is that victim surveys undercount the real number of violent offences, particularly when violence occurs within the family. On violent crime, therefore, we cannot be certain which of the two sets of figures is more accurate (though both point to a large increase, differing only in the matter of degree). As for other crimes, the sharp increase in recorded burglaries since 1987 is supported by the Survey. All in all, therefore, the BCS does not cast serious doubt on the
During the last half of the nineteenth century there was a marked fall in the crime rate, both as regards property and violent crime. The crime rate — that is the number of criminal offences per 100,000 of the population — did not increase substantially until the late 1950s. It then rose ever faster. The crime rate is now ten times that of 1955 and sixty times that of 1900.
Although of scant comfort, the explosion of crime since the 1960s is not just a British phenomenon. In the United States between the mid-1960s and 1990 the crime rate trebled and the rate of violent crimes quadrupled. The United States — more specifically life in America’s big cities — is still more violent than in Britain and Europe. Partly this reflects the number of guns on the streets (as opposed to in American homes, where the evidence is that they probably deter burglary); partly it reflects the number of murders and attacks associated with drug dealing. With these important exceptions, however, the picture is similar on both sides of the Atlantic. Property crime rates are now at comparable levels throughout the West. And we in Britain have to rid ourselves of the complacent assumption that we are immune from the trends we deplore in the United States because of our allegedly gentler, more communitarian culture. For example, in 1981 the rate of burglary in Britain was half that of the United States; in 1987 it equalled it; it is now higher.[92]
It is possible to quibble about the legitimacy of comparing statistics, both between periods and between countries. But the fact of what has happened in Western society over the last thirty years cannot be denied. Nor should its significance.[93]
Theorists and practical men alike have generally agreed that the primary purpose of the state is to maintain order. It is highly desirable that order should be upheld under law and that law should respect rights. But unless the state has the will and capacity to ensure order, not only bad but eventually good people will flout its authority. The law-abiding are demoralized when they see criminals getting away with it. Citizens and local communities tend to turn inwards, away from national institutions, losing confidence in the law-enforcement authorities and relying on degrees of vigilantism to protect themselves, their families and their neighbourhoods. And once that process of disintegration goes beyond a certain point it is all but impossible to reverse. This is the deeper reason why governments in Western countries should be concerned about the trends of rising crime and violence.
THE GROWTH OF WELFARE DEPENDENCY
If the sharp rise in crime over the last three decades is one startingpoint for social policy, the barely less dramatic onset of welfare dependency is another. (I shall suggest some connections later.) Since 1949, when the British Welfare State was effectively established, public spending on social security has risen seven times (in real terms), up from under 5 per cent of GDP to about 12 per cent now; it constitutes almost a third of total public expenditure. This real increase continued when I was Prime Minister, and since. Of course, to lump together contributory and non-contributory, universal and means-tested benefits — retirement pensions, housing benefit and Income Support for single parents — is somewhat misleading.
But these crude figures show two important points.
First, insofar as the share of public expenditure and GDP taken by a particular programme reflects the importance collectively attributed to it, British society (or at least British government) is asserting that Social Security is not only more important than other programmes — its relative importance is actually increasing. The Social Security budget is twice as large as the next largest, that is spending on health. More significantly, perhaps, it is six times as large as the budget for law and order.
Secondly, in spite of the large general increase in prosperity over the last forty years, there are more people making larger demands on the taxpayer to sustain their or their families’ living standards than ever before. Against this, it has been argued that in spite of the economic advance since 1979 ‘the poor have got poorer’. The latest official
It is anyway probably wrong even to think of these people as a ‘group’. Its composition is constantly changing, as people’s circumstances change. So the figures provide no evidence that particular people’s incomes have dropped; and there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that their standard of living has risen. Most