fullspate

Ailing democracies

Ask most people who have grown up in a democracy what the best political system is and they will say: democracy. Ask them what the essence of a democracy is and they will say: being able to vote for your political representatives. Politics = democracy = voting. This simple equation creates the impression that as long as there are free and fair elections everything is fine. But is it?

No, it isn’t. There has to be more to political life than voting. At the very least there must also be a good level of public debate, which means a prominent, open and in-depth consideration of all the major issues – a discussion involving both political representatives, interested groups and those with more specialist knowledge and experience.

There are many ways we might judge the quality of our public debate, but one of those has surely got to be the willingness of political leaders to challenge public misconceptions. Let’s use this idea to look at democracy in action in the UK and see what the level of debate is like there concerning one particular issue: crime.

The British Crime Survey in 2003 showed that more and more people believed that crime was rising, despite the fact that overall there had actually been a 28% fall since 1997. Violent crime generally had dropped by 27% over that period and armed robbery in particular had dropped by 50%. A second survey revealed that people believed the courts were far too lenient (although their beliefs were based on gross misconceptions). People believed that less than 45% of convicted burglars were sent to prison, although the true figure was 74%. They also believed that fewer than 60% of rapists were sent to jail, whereas the truth was that 98% were being imprisoned.

Similar misconceptions repeatedly appeared (and continue to appear) in the press whenever a new law and order issue arose. What was interesting was the response of the government. Rather than challenging these misconceptions and raising the level of debate, it chose to launch a new campaign in 2002, beginning with the statement that “Britain has never been at a more insecure moment.” The campaign used slogans like “The war on crime”, “The war on drugs” and “ Zero tolerance for street crime” to appeal to the press and public. Assuming that crime was on the increase, the policy was to introduce a lot of new legislation to crack down on anti-social behaviour on city streets, to introduce a more aggressive style of policing so that more people are arrested or given on-the-spot fines, and to change the way the courts operate to ensure that more people who are convicted of crimes get sent to prison.

The policies were very popular with the majority of the population but not with the majority of those who were actually involved in the treatment of criminals. Although the courts in England and Wales lock up more children than any other country in Europe, those who have experience of working with juvenile offenders realise that prison is not the answer. 40% of juveniles who end up in prison have been in local authority care (because their families have broken up) and 90% either have a history of mental illness or of drug abuse. Prison for many of these people simply consolidates a spiral of decline and will lead to a long history of reoffending.

What these people need to keep them out of prison is support, both educational and psychological. Anger management courses and drug rehabilitation programmes with compulsory weekly urine tests have proved to be effective, as have therapeutic programmes which involve the families of young criminals. Perhaps most effective of all are the educational programmes that give offenders the skills they need to find and keep down a job. These people often lack the most basic literacy skills without which they don’t stand a chance in the job market. In one study of female prisoners the education programme reduced the rate of women’s return to prison from 33% to 7%.

Not only is an increase in the use of imprisonment ineffective, it is also extremely expensive. In 2003 the running costs of the prisons worked out at 37,000 pounds for each inmate. Compared to this a community-based rehabilitation programme cost only 6,000 pounds a year to run.

The government chose to ignore the views of specialists and chose not to encourage a prominent public debate. Instead it chose to accept the view expressed so vociferously in the popular press and then tailored its policies to exploit the deluded panic about a crime wave that didn’t really exist. They announced that new laws were needed and they proceeded to create 700 new criminal offences. With the slogan “prison works” they set about building new prisons with places for an extra 9,500 adults and 4,000 young offenders aged between 12 and 16. The judiciary got the message and rates of imprisonment of convicted adults went up from 45% in 1992 to 64% by 2001. At the same time resources for community rehabilitation programmes were cut back.

Why did the government act in this way? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the government cared less about the reality of crime and more about creating an image for itself what would be most popular with voters.

The media also play an important role. Governments know how easily unflattering press coverage can lead to them losing the next election. Since the 1980’s more and more emphasis has been put on managing the image presented by the media. So the Prime Minister’s office is concerned less with encouraging public debate than with looking for the photo opportunities, sound bites and slogans that will be eagerly taken up by the popular press.

At the same time the role of debate even within the ruling party has diminished. In the case of the Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2003 one of his own ministers, Clare Short, made the following criticism of the contemporary style of government:

“The problem is the centralisation of power in the hands of a Prime Minister and an increasingly small number of advisers who make decisions in private without proper discussion.”

The Prime Minister was acting increasingly like a monarch and less like the leader of a democracy.

When a Labour member of Parliament tried to speak out against Tony Blair’s decision not to allow Parliament to decide whether or not to go to war with Iraq he was privately ordered to shut up and stop talking to the media without permission from the Prime Minister’s office. And all of this despite the promise made by Tony Blair in 1997 that his government would be the one “to restore trust in politics in this country.”

Unfortunately the interest in politics (for which meaningful and educated public debate has to be a key element) gave way to a much narrower interest in power. In 2004 Tony Blair is reported to have said: “I have taken from my party everything they thought they believed in. I have stripped them of their core beliefs. What keeps it together is success and power.”

The government has not suspended the electoral system but in its pursuit of power the hopes for a more democratic culture have been trampled into the dust.