As usual our industry is at the centre of the debate. A YouGov survey suggests that terrorism is the public’s greatest fear. The worry is so great it’s putting people off having babies – a result which goes to show just how unaware people are of the greater risks in life.
The survey was meant to look at “global” worries so doesn’t seem to have had a tick box for crime in general – which makes you question its value in the first place.
As real as the threat of terrorism is in the UK – and accepting how central it is for the security industry – I think a bigger worry for most people is everyday crime and low level violence and disorder. Fighting this is the installers’s bread and butter. (Even everyday anti-social behaviour now has retailers looking for solutions.)
It’s no wonder crime is so high on the public agenda when you read that a 17 year old stabbed in a London park at the weekend is the nineteenth teenager to die of a knife-related death in the capital this year
Crack down
Predictably, all parties want to crack down. But no amount of spin will now convince the public that knife crime is under control. It’s even more alarming to see the tally of gun crime– many of those arrested being “children”.
Drunken yobbishness is now a depressing part of life in formerly respectable towns all over the country and, despite the limiting effects of CCTV and security systems, in certain areas the criminals do seem to have control.
Unlike the politicians, ordinary people – especially crime victims – see the broad answers as relatively simple. Common sense says we should recruit thousands more real police officers, get them out patrolling the streets instead of at the station doing paperwork and build more prisons so that there is a real deterrent instead of a ‘trophy’ tag.
The ‘teeth’ of security
CCTV installers must have a strong opinion on this. E-mail me with yours. No matter how good the evidential image from your camera, it has no teeth unless there is the threat of effective punishment behind it.
Many of the gimmicky initiatives we’ve seen over the past few years don’t seem to have made the streets safer – remember the on-the-spot fines, with police walking youths to a cash point? Remember the three strikes for burglars policy? Your alarm systems may have been effective but did they get the burglars off the streets?
Not surprisingly, the police would rather be doing what they joined up for than pushing paper to achieve government targets. Anonymous police blogs out there illustrate how frustrated many feel (this seeming to be a popular one I stumbled across). And when’s the last time you heard a law abiding citizen complain that there were too many police about?
Fighting the causes of crime now seems a bridge too far. It’s time to reclaim the streets and set tougher behaviour standards everyone understands.
Tsars in their eyes
I notice on the YouGov “worry” survey that identity fraud doesn’t figure, despite reports that it’s now so bad that there’s a need for an identity fraud tsar. Just how many “tsars” do we need in the UK? And does the appalling figure of GB pound 1.7bn include benefit fraud? If it does then “identity” doesn’t have to come into it. Benefit fraud is, in most cases, a misrepresentation of circumstances, not identity. So more police needed here too.
Cut out for the job
I was amused to see the story about how even a cardboard policeman can cut crime. It seems thefts dropped from 36 a month to just one when a life size cut-out of PC Bob Molloy was placed in a Co-op in Derbyshire. Then the cut-out was stolen. But this is not a new idea. I once saw a picture in a Russian security magazine which showed a cut-out police car at the side of the road. It looked quite realistic and probably worked for a time.
No doubt there’s someone in a government back room right now working out how many cardboard cut-out policemen you could provide for the cost of a real one.
Excellent photos
At the time of writing we are all gearing up for a great night out at the Security Excellence Awards 2007. We’ll be carrying a winners’ gallery in Security Installer but meanwhile go to our website where, from Thursday morning (October 11), you’ll be able to see all the photos from the night.
See you next time,
Alan Hyder
Editor, Security Installer