Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
and 33.9 % respectively of the crimes reported to the BCS surveyors were formally
dealt with by the police. This does mean that there was a substantial increase in the
reported-recorded crime difference, but it still leaves 78 % in 1981 and 66 % in 2003
of the crimes experienced unknown to the police and judicial system. In addition,
even these figures do not record the extent of anti-social behaviour or incivilities
to others, behaviours not criminalized but which are often a major cause of what
makes people uneasy or even fearful of their safety in cities or city areas. In general,
therefore, all comparative crime statistics, and certainly changes through time, need
to be treated with prudence rather than as absolutes.
12.3.2
Policing
Initially, the response to the increase in crime in most nations and cities was to
adopt more repressive crime-fighting methods, from more coercive policing, to
stricter laws and longer prison sentences for offenders, resulting in major increases
in the prison population. The last 30 years has also seen an increase in the number
of private security companies, and the development in some countries of many
new gated communities, some with guards, for middle and upper income fami-
lies. In some ways this is a reversal back to pre-industrial standards of local area
protection for those groups within cities who could afford it. In terms of policing
there is general agreement that increasing the numbers of police does not neces-
sarily produce a safer society, since it depends on how effective the police are.
Even in democratic countries it is difficult to see a correlation between changing
police numbers and crime reduction. Indeed there are major differences in the size
of police forces; in Europe the numbers of police per 100,000 population for the
bigger countries range from 525 and 457 in Spain and Italy to 258 and 298 in U.K.
and Germany, with smaller countries showing lows of 152 and 200 in Finland
and Denmark respectively
(
EuroStats: Crime
2013
). More specifically, there has
been increasing evidence of the ineffectiveness of some policing during the last
quarter of the twentieth century when crime spiked. One reason is the increasing
specialisation and bureaucratization of the police forces. Some of this is certainly
needed to improve crime detection and evidence collection and processing. But
a consequence has been that the police are far less visible on the streets, since
office work takes up more and more time, rather than actual crime prevention.
Not surprisingly, many argue that the police have become too separate from the
public at large and they do not respond quickly enough to any but the most serious
crimes, such as murder. Also the failure of most police forces in countries that have
experienced immigration or have minority races to add people of different ethnic
origin to their organizations has led to tensions between these communities and the
police who are not representative of the changing population. However in the last
decade determined efforts have been made in some countries to add more people
of colour and different backgrounds to police forces. In addition, there are often
limited links or even trust between the different levels of police forces in a country,
