Today's entertaining ditty claims that the Tories are weak on Crime. This should be a fun one. Afterall, the Tories didn't start a policy of releasing convicted and sentenced criminals just because they needed the extra space. Let's not forget that this scheme released over 11,000 people who the law said should be behind bars in just the first four months.
Anyway, the point of Labour's new attack on the Tories isn't that they're Strong on Crime (which they're clearly not) but that the Tories are weak.
Alan Johnson's statement provides two key points.
- Tories want to limit the use of DNA by the police
- Tories have campaigned against CCTV
Clearly these Tories are mad! Everyone knows that CCTV and DNA are essential tools in fighting the crime waves we're facing!
Except, as we all know, Crime is actually pretty static (it's only fear of crime that's up and you can hardly say that Labour have reduced the need for 'fear' in this country). So let's just look at how effective CCTV and DNA actually have been.
DNA first. The Tories actually voted against proposals to introduce mandatory DNA collection for "Recordable Offences". Wikipedia tells me these include: "drunkenness, poaching, public order, begging, failing to provide a specimen of breath, and taking a pedal cycle without consent." Does anyone really think that these are the sort of offences that should dictate mandatory DNA capture? Are they really on a par with Rape, Murder or other more serious offences? It's worth noting that for Rape and Murder, crimes were DNA evidence should be a vital tool, the database was only able to solve less than 30% of cases where they already had a DNA match (source). That means even when they were able to find a match to the criminal on the database, they still only had a 30% chance of actually using that to solve the case!
In addition, there are 28,625 people on the database who volunteered their DNA. These people are mostly victims and third parties who could have been legitimately present at the crime scene. Once they have given consent for their DNA to be added to the database "it cannot then be withdrawn". Their data will be saved for 6 years. It was only with a serious fight this was reduced from 12 years! Even the bloody EU thinks this is illegal!
Currently there's over 5 million unique entries on the DNA database. Roughly that's one for each ten people in the country. Does anyone really believe that there are 5 million criminals in this country (and I mean real criminals, not people who drove at 33mph in a 30 zone)? Still, the size of the database is no reason to dismiss it. Maybe it is solving thousands of otherwise unsolvable crimes? Actually DNA helps (so, this includes many cases that would have been solved anyway) a mere 0.36% of crimes. Maybe it would solve more if everyone was on the database, but if that's the intention then Labour should be clear about this, rather than trying to get DNA records for every possible "crime". How long before speeding, or littering is added to the list of offences that require DNA capture?
CCTV is much easier to dismiss as a crime fighting weapon. This is even more useless than DNA evidence. We have over one million cameras in London. They were reported to require '1000' cameras to solve a single crime. Whilst the DNA database costs a 'mere' £4million or so. CCTV has had £500m "invested" into it nationwide. The cameras are nearly bloody useless and cost a fortune. At least the DNA database is relatively cheap!
Labour have picked DNA and CCTV as sticks to beat the Tory party with. Both of these solve very few crimes and have massive civil liberty issues attached to them. If I were a Labour voter I would be very concerned that a party that has traditionally stood up for Civil Rights is now doing it's best to trample these in the dust and is smearing any party that is trying to stand up to them.
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