Crack Down on Crime

This is just an aimless ramble.

All governments, of whatever hue, want to crack down on crime - it's a natural vote winner, yet nothing government does (which is invariably based on ideology that lacks any evidence) does anything meaningful on crime statistics. If they go down temporarily, then government steps in an attributes such drop to some initiative, with no evidence except correlation, only to keep silent when the figures go up again.

Harsher sentences appear to do little to deter criminals; at best they keep them out of circulation for a bit longer. When the chances of being caught are minimal, harsher sentences have little, if any, effect. Threats of death and transportation had little effect in Victorian England. 

Sociologists are convinced of the link between single-parenthood and crime. If this is indeed the case, and some 34 studies bear this out, then the problem is systemic and no amount of governmental tinkering with the justice system will change that. How do you persuade parents who aren't particularly interested in each other, and may indeed hate each other, to stick together for the sake of the kids? It can do more harm than good.

In 2019, 14.9% of the families in the UK were lone parent families (2.9 million). Over the last 10 years this number has not changed significantly, but between 1999 and 2019 there has been a statistically significant increase of 14.5%. 

Lone parent mothers remained the most common type of lone parents in 2019, accounting for 86% of this family type. However, from 1999 to 2019 the number of lone parent fathers has grown by 22%, while the number of lone parent mothers also increased but at a slower rate (13.4%). These increases are both statistically significant.

What causes single parent-hood? The causes are many and varied. Some politicians maintain the welfare state is the cause, but it was be equally argued that the reverse is the case. We simply lack evidence and have nothing but correlation - and correlation is not necessarily causation.

There's no doubt that single parenthood is no longer frowned upon as much as it was in the middle of the last century and it has become socially acceptable the more we have become inclusive.

The following chart is the recorded crime per 100,000 people in England and Wales during the 20th century.

And below is the crime stats per 1,000 population for 2002 onwards (note the scale change):

Nothing much has changed and we're still around the top end of the previous chart.

Of course, much depends on how crime is recorded, which depends on whether people bother to report it in the first instance. It also depends on new laws on what constitutes criminal activity and the more laws that are brought in, the more crime will be reported. Since the mid 50s, for example, which is when crimes seemed to go exponential, more and more people started owning and driving cars, which gave plenty of people the chance to engage in crimes as new laws were brought in to control drivers. Cars also became an easy target for theft - it's less risky to attempt a theft in a driveway than entering a house.

It's an intractable problem where one can easily put the cart before the horse and reach all manner of ridiculous conclusions.