Fewer Guns, More Cameras, More Crime

You'll occasionally read in some newspaper about how Britain, since it has become illegal under nearly all circumstances to possess a firearm there, even in the home, is now gun free and crime free.

Well, the Brits are batting .500 anyway. They are now gun-free. Crime, on the other hand ...

Politicians and law enforcement thought they had it all figured out. Take guns away from the citizenry, put surveillance cameras everywhere, monitor the daylights out of all human interaction, and respond to criminal activity after it has occurred. Crime will plummet.

So much for figuring:

Cameras, Crooks, and Deterrence
Constant surveillance seems to have had little effect on Britain’s sky-high crime.
By Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal

After the North Koreans, the British are probably the most highly surveyed people in the world. Around 10,000 publicly funded closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras—to say nothing of the private ones—watch London every day. The average Briton, you often hear, winds up photographed 300 times a day as he goes about his business, even if his business is crime.

Whenever a brutal murder is committed in a public place, the police announce that they are examining the video evidence: no such murder ever seems to occur off camera. Yet the number of CCTV cameras in place seems to have no effect on the number of crimes solved ...

The problem with the criminal law in Britain today is that it neither incapacitates criminals nor deters those inclined, for whatever reason, to break the law. The crime-inclined are probably more numerous than ever before, which makes leniency doubly disastrous. The huge number of CCTV cameras in Britain—perhaps as many as a third of all such cameras in the world—is an official response to the increased lawlessness of the population. But as with so much official activity in Britain, it achieves nothing. It is para-detection and para-deterrence rather than real detection and real
deterrence. (link)

Deterrence. The key to crime prevention. The kind that the British once had but surrendered. Now the bad guys rule the streets.

Liberal politicians are to blame for this. Hopefully they'll feel the wrath - some day - of an aroused populace. Prison is too good for them.