Playground Politics

CPS "is crazy" to take play-time insults to court

It is about time that a judge suggested that both the "Criminal Protection Service" (CPS) and the police acted responsibly and stopped pursuing perceived, rather than actual crimes.

As Judge Finestein was able to point out:

"This is how stupid the system is getting. There are major crimes out there and the police don't bother to prosecute. If you get your car stolen it doesn't matter, but you get two kids falling out because of racist comments - this is nonsense."

Simon Heffer managed to go even further by suggesting what should in future be official government policy:

"Since neither the CPS nor the police have anything better to do, perhaps I could suggest an extension of this policy, starting with abandoning the minimum age of criminality. It is obvious that all primary schools and, indeed, nurseries should be regularly inspected for signs of racist tots, with exemplary prosecutions where necessary. And don't forget maternity wards - you can't catch them too young, and heaven knows what harm is being done to our nation by bigoted babies."

The whole process is absolute nonsense - I still have no idea how it even got to the stage of being adjourned for reconsideration. Aside from that, what happens to be just as disturbing, is the childish behaviour displayed by the teaching unions in verbally assaulting the presiding judge. All that Judge Finestein had suggested, and at his perspicuous best, was that "in the old days the headmaster would have given them a good clouting." Personally, I would rather the teaching unions worry about the disgraceful education system that they currently preside over and are complicit in encouraging. I suppose there is something to be said that they are at least considering the children over themselves for a change - which isn't something that can be said about the police in this incident.

Firstly, in relation to the police and their neuralgic reaction, we need to understand they have over the passage of time developed an inverted belief of their role in society. This stems from the underlying problem that the higher echelons of the service have a desire to be politicians rather than policemen. Sir Iain Blair, Commissioner of the Metropolis, is the case exemplar. Oxford educated, which doesn't necessarily mean anything these days apart from a competence to regurgitate facts, he is the self-professed intellectual at the vanguard of attempts to transform the relationship between the service and the citizen.

His recent Dimbleby lecture, in which he asked for a debate on the seemingly reciprocal question "what sort of police force do we want?" is a case in point. He meant it as a serious question though. For the police service no longer believes its role is, or should be, confined to the enforcement of law and the maintenance of order. They believe they should, in tandem with the government, create an all-powerful duumvirate to promote and enforce the prevailing social values and attitudes of the present government.

Despite the police service's profound assumptions, just because you happen to be ordained with a 2:1 in sociology - or in Sir Ian's case a 2:2 in English - it doesn't mean your legitimate remit extends beyond your job title. They simply fail to realise that their job is not to interpret the law, or even to debate the law, but to implement it. Quite simply, if they want to enter politics, they can either stand for election at a general election; or, as the Tories have suggested, support the implementation of accountability in the form of elected chief constables and commissioners in the localities. If they then want to spend their time chasing fox-hunters across Gloucestershire, instead of pursuing some bad prat who has just kicked your grandmother's teeth in for her pension, they can put their record to the voter. However, I am quite sure that if this was the case, Richard Brunstorm, Chief Constable and Mad Mullah of the North Wales Traffic Taliban, wouldn't be quite so rigorous in his persecution of motorists - actually he is that arrogant. I do suspect though that accountability isn't something that would sit comfortably with some elected officials, especially if it involved surveillance, a tube station and an electrician.

Central to the vexatious nature of this case is the sense that justice is not being seen to be done in everyday existence. This particular case isn't really about race or the legal age of criminality; it is about proportion and context. There is a deep-seated belief that real crimes are not being prevented or even being given serious thought, that when attempts are make by private individuals to enforce the law, that attempt is punished more severely than the original offence. There is a real perception, whatever the truth, that the judicial system is weighted in favour of the criminal. The irascible nature of it all is further eroused by the police's puritanical pursuit of individuals or groups who happen to hold egregious tendencies not entirely in keeping with government orthodoxy. The police service is then perceived as representing the government's provisional wing, exculpating itself of its foundational responsibilities to the citizen and consciously implementing an authoritarian doctrine.

Why is there then this perception that the police seemingly and assiduously assail softer-targets? I can only think that it is less time-consuming and simpler to prosecute generally law-abiding members of society than it is hardened criminals. For a start, soft-targets like motorists who speed 5mph over the national speed limit; and pensioners who refuse to pay their council tax, are significantly easier to find than the hardened drug dealer on a crime-ridden estate. Also, not only do the law-abiding not take to kindly to the stigma of having a jail sentence, but more importantly, they provide a steady source of income to pay for the cultural awareness and diversity training programmes that officers are religiously coerced to undertake. The natural result is that when officers are investigating a Muslim residence suspected of a misdemeanor, enquiries are first made as to whether the female occupants are suitably covered up and that dogs are strictly prohibited from entering the house - only then can they smash the front-door of its hinges. Oh well, the offending article may well have have been absconded, but at least we didn't cause any hypothetical offence.

This is the problem with the police service. It fails to understand that the prevention of crime is its primary goal, and if that isn't being fulfilled, well, equality targets and cultural sensibilities will have to take a back-seat. The police service isn't some great social experiment.

The Greater Manchester Police statement over the issue of the charging of the 10-year-old boy clarifies fully this cultural fetish that predominates. The official spokesman went on to say that the force took all reports of crime seriously, but went to great lengths to state that the force vehemently opposed any racism in whatever form. Who was suggesting otherwise? I would agree with the officer's summation - to an extent, for this is a 10-year-old boy. The only conclusion you can make is that the police has been emotionally traumatised by accusations of "institutionalised" and "unwitting" racism and, as a consequence, that the police seem to be addressing certain crimes more zealously than others.

As Minette Marrin of the Sunday Times articulated:

"Racism is, of course, a real evil but the current guilt-ridden obsession with it, so clearly expressed in this case, only serves to inflame it and actually to further the cause of racist politics - the reverse of what the politically correct protagonists intended. "

Aside from the alleged criminal nature of this particular court case, and the subsequent actions taken by the respective authorities, this case happens to represent the entrenched symptoms of a greater problem: the lack of moral authority in our state schools to punish and reprimand children. Unable to deal sufficiently with the 10 year-old-boy, the school in question felt it had no alternative recourse but to pass on the complaint to the police, who I am sure with great pleasure presented it to the CPS. If the teaching profession still had the ability to apply discipline, and subsequently derive respect, this internecine court case would never have got this far. Finally, the ultimate losers in this ridiculous case are the police service, who can ill-afford to continue to terminally lose the support and trust of the citizen.