British Crime Legislation Doomed to Fails

News:

MPs and campaigners have sounded alarm at a series of proposals in the government crime reduction plan, including more frequent stop and search. Liberty said the permanent relaxation of search powers would “compound discrimination in Britain and divide communities” and the former shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott said the plan was “a checklist of gimmicks designed to get Priti Patel good headlines in the tabloid press in the short term but it does nothing about the long term problems in the criminal justice system.”

Boris Johnson said the “beating crime plan” was part of the commitment to “levelling up” parts of the country plagued by crime and antisocial behaviour. The Home Office said the plan put special emphasis on causes of crime including alcohol and illegal drugs, citing statistics that half of all homicides last year were drug-related.

Emmanuelle Andrews, policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, said: “We all want to feel safe in our communities, but expanding what have proven to be discriminatory police powers isn’t how we get there. “Many communities, particularly communities of colour, experience overbearing and oppressive policing and the package the government has put forward will only worsen this. It will subject more young people to further coercion, punishment and control.” (Source: The Guardian Newspaper)

Comment:

Whenever capitalists attempt to solve a problem, they do so in a way that either diverts attention from the problem without actually solving it, or creates new problems as a result of their solution. Crime is one of those problems that plagues capitalist societies and badly affects everyone, but time after time government solutions are only cosmetic changes. Occasionally, when contributing factors like alcohol and drugs are identified, their liberal ideology does not allow them to really deal with the problem, so halfhearted token restrictions are introduced. The elephant in the room is the culture of freedom and its role as the major cause of crime.

Often the solutions only address the correlated circumstances that contribute to an increase in crime, while the underlying causes remain unaddressed. The reality is that the criminal mentality exists in elite capitalists and politicians, just as it does in poor working class, gang members and alcoholics. Belief in freedom to do as one pleases, and the right to step on others to get what you want is bedrock on which Capitalism is built. It is demonstrated in the behaviour of politicians, glorified by journalists and academics, promoted in popular entertainment, and imposed on the rest of the world in their foreign policies.

This crime legislation, like all before it, will not address the corrupt capitalist aqeedah (doctrine) and its fundamental role in promoting criminal behaviour. Moreover, minority communities will continue to be unjustly targeted and suffer more oppressive policing, while the crime will continue to get worse.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Yahya Nisbet
Media Representative of Hizb ut Tahrir in Britain