I’ve been frustrated for a
while now with how this country is policed. Obviously the police policies are
driven by lawmakers – and there’s a lot that they get right. But at the
extremes of both ends, there is a lot I think they are getting wrong. At one
end of the spectrum, there are some ridiculously dubious so-called crimes (or
non-crimes), especially to do with offence, speech and online conduct, that
involve the police when it really should not. Yet at the other end of the
spectrum, the lawmakers and the police are utterly feeble when it comes to
behaviour that really should be dealt with more comprehensively. It’s madness
that people can burgle your house, or cause deaths and suffering through the mile-long
tailbacks created by blocking the major roads, and not go to prison. Too much
of the law has become weak and woke, and its lack of sufficient power and
authority has created a culture where too many people doing too much harm to
others fail to receive proper punishment, and the victims fail to receive
proper justice.
It’s well known that from the early 1990s crime rates have been falling all around the Western world (for a multitude of reasons), while at the same time, more and more laws have been created, and many more possible crimes have been introduced by making more things illegal.
What you have to remember is that it is always in politicians and the civil servants’ interests to keep growing their departments, keep the public convinced their services are more and more important to the running of society, and keep lobbying for more money to achieve this. Just as it’s in a plumber’s interest that people need leaks fixed, pipes mended and products installed, so too it’s in politicians and the civil services’ interests that they remain needed and relevant, and that there are problems in society for which we turn to them to fix. In economic terms, they are incentivised to keep demand high so they can keep the supply coming, and justify the funding for it. The way politicians and the civil services keep demand for policing high is by making more things illegal, and involving themselves in more and more of our daily business.
In the free market, we pay businesses to provide the things we want, and when a lot of people want those goods or services, businesses become mega-successful. Political industries do not have the same model or the same kind of demand curves, so in a sense they have to act against those same natural interests in order to survive. In other words, politics purports to be about making things better and bringing an end to problems, but yet the existence of politics depends on those problems (plus newly created ones) continuing to exist in some form.
Because of this mechanism, the police are becoming less and less of a good institution - reflecting a society as a whole that's gone down the same path, whereby actions that never should be crimes are being criminalised left, right and centre; and actions that should be more heavily penalised are being treated too lightly for fear of being too unsympathetic to the perpetrator's feelings, hardships or causes for grievance.
