Cameron on Crime

After that rather embarassing moment of madness praising David Cameron (was it good for you Dave?) I also had a look at David Cameron's speach to The Police Federation. To avoid becoming all embarasingly positive again I'm going to boil it down to just a few key points to try and sum it up such as this:

This top-down approach is completely, damagingly, one hundred and eighty degrees wrong and it's got to change.

Remember Oliver Letwin's appalling speech? He took an entire article to say just this:

I mean a social policy revolution as far-reaching and lasting in its positive effects as the economic revolution the Conservative Party led in the 1980s.

It is necessary because social breakdown is the great challenge of our times, just as rescuing our economy was the great challenge of two decades ago.

Letwin said it very very badly, but I guess he had a set number of column inches to fill. Or he really is the kind of wanker that thinks post-modern lit-crit has anything useful to say to the world.

You accept that responsibility when you choose to become police officers, and I believe it's time for reform to set you free to do the job you want to do and to give you the full professional responsibility you deserve.

Give responsibility back to the proffesionals to use their judgement, rather than forcing them to comply with centrally imposed rules and targets. I can see why the media has been protecting us from crazy talk that this. He'd better not mention that to Polly and her Big Norse Warrior, their heads would explode.

So a key part of our reforms to the criminal justice system will be to replace the Human Rights Act with something that works.

Finally something I can disagree with. Not that the Human Rights Act has not been twisted by the Human Rights Industry into a mockery of itself. Rather I want to keep it (maybe in a reformed form) because it is better than nothing. Especially as there is the prospect of the current fascist cunts getting back into power someday should Cameron turf them out and be able to implement this.

A longer quote now because it is important as it, finally, spells out something Cameron is planning to do. We've been waiting quite a while for some actual policy wo here it is:

And at the heart of our plans for police reform is my commitment to bring common sense to the law and to policing.

Restoring discretion to officers.

Sweeping away the arbitrary national targets that skew performance, leading to police officers going for easy detections of minor crimes

Now what can I complain about with that? Erm ... you shouldn't start a sentence with a conjucture? Which I do all the time, Damn.

On to another slab of policy meat:

we plan to replace them with directly elected commissioners - commissioners, not police chiefs - who will answer to their communities.

In doing so, we will of course protect the operational independence of forces.

We have a vital duty to prevent the politicisation of policing.

Hear that Rambo Reid? "We have a vital duty to prevent the politicisation of policing", at least somebody gets it. The police should enforce the law (which includes the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925) and prevent crime and disorder, without fear or favour. Not try to create soundbites and statistics to satisfy a Home Secretaries need for headlines.

Now we get into some stuff that I can finally disagree with.

That either means forces collaborating more effectively, or a national Serious Crime Force to do the job.

Either way, the era of forty three fiefdoms is over

Local police forces have to be small to continue to be locally accountable. The SOCA is even worse being effectively the Home Secretaries private police force, which he had already stated is something that it is vital to avoid creating.

When you look at antiquated IT systems that aren't joined up when you look at processes and paperwork that a modern business would streamline

Just no, hasn't he learnt from all the Labour years that whenever the government gets involved in a big IT system it ends up a disaster that is often worse than the system it replaces.

Overall, again, a lot of good stuff. Lots of good noises about reducing state interference and letting people get on with it. I disagree with a few of the policies but it is rather nice to actually see some for a change. He points out that many of the problems we are seeing are due to social changes and will not be fixed without correcting these social changes. It is just a shame that he does not go further and actually say what it was that caused these social changes and what needs to be done to correct them. We must get rid of the Welfare State.