Crime isn’t rising because the laws are not strict enough, or because the【21

Crime isn’t rising because the laws are not strict enough, or because the sentences are not tough enough, or simply because there aren’t enough policemen on the beat. It is rising because the agencies and individuals who can have a preventative effect on crime are not pulling together or in the same direction. The police are one of those agencies, of course. But crime prevention is also a matter for governments who are content to see mass unemployment turn into a way of life, for councils who prefer to shout yah-boo at the police, instead of getting on with making life safer for local people, for architects who design exposed and indefensible buildings, for parents who don’t take enough interest in what their teenage children are getting up to and for householders who sit inside and moan rather than do anything about the state of the neighbourhood or the street. Crime prevention has been neglected for too many by too many. Over the last ten years it has been wilfully neglected in defiance of mounting evidence that it is the central hope of effective action against crime.