London: Mayor & More

At Guardian Comment: Boris, Crime & Expectations

My latest:

Neither the man from the Met nor London’s mayor could be accused of presentation fatigue. At a joint press conference at City Hall on Wednesday, Boris Johnson and Sir Paul Stephenson hawked Scotland Yard’s new, London-wide crime mapping website with the uncrushable optimism and huckster guile of door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. Is law-breaking soiling the deep pile of your neighbourhood? We have the answer! It beats as it sweeps as it cleans!

Sir Ian Blair Bites Back

The Guardian reports.

Sir Ian Blair: The Plotting Thickens?

Says the Times:

"Detailed plans are being prepared to oust Sir Ian Blair from his position as head of Scotland Yard in an attempt to halt the collapse of morale in the Metropolitan Police."

A no-name is quoted:

“He has become the issue. There comes a point when fairness has nothing to do with it and what matters is the integrity of the organisation.”

Unnamed sources should be treated with care, but the logic of those sentiments is becoming ever harder to argue with. That said, the big question for me is who would replace Sir Ian. The Guardian interviews a possible contender - Mike Fuller, Chief Constable of Kent - though he won't have endeared himself to Jacqui Smith.

Mayor Johnson & Crime Mapping

Two minutes after taking this photo, Mayor Johnson was standing at the podium on the left and Deputy Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson at the one on the right. Their subject was the Met's new crime mapping website. I'll have more later. The BBC and the Guardian have more now.

Murder & Inequality

Criminologist Richard Garside at Cif:

"Most behaviour currently defined as criminal remains unknown and unmeasured, making simple comparisons of economic trends and the official crime rate a dubious exercise. A stronger case can be made that what matters is levels of inequality within a society, rather than the aggregate level of national wealth."

But it is the distribution of homicide risk that is the most telling feature, as research by Professor Danny Dorling of the University of Sheffield illustrates. He found that the risk of homicide for those living in the richest neighbourhoods fell during the 1980s and 1990s. The risk of homicide for those living in the poorest neighbourhoods went up sixfold.

Placed alongside research by other scholars such as Professor Richard Wilkinson of the University of Nottingham, there is a compelling case to be made that unequal societies are more crime-ridden, violent and harmful."

And London is the home of inequality.

Mayor Johnson Press Conference

By the time you read this I'll be perched attentively in the front row at what will be only the fourth press conference Mayor Johnson has held since his election - and one of those was that debacle with Ray Lewis. As with the last one, this will be dominated by the co-appearance of a senior Met officer introducing what I'm told will be a major new crime initiative. Last time the top cop in attendance was Sir Ian Blair. I suppose in view of recent events we shouldn't be surprised that this time his deputy, Sir Paul Stephenson will be fielding the awkward questions. I anticipate these proceedings with a rather heavy heart. Will be Twittering and reporting here later.

Fall In Knife Possession Charges

From The Guardian:

"New figures released by Scotland Yard show the number of people charged with possessing a knife or sharp instrument has dropped by just over 50% since 2004."

That's until April of this year. Now read on

Mayor Johnson & Youth Crime

Joe Levenson was the GLA's community safety policy manager until November 2007. He writes:

"Resources must be targeted in high-crime and deprived areas, but with community support. It will be critical to get the London Development Agency to operate in a far more strategic and accountable way and to attract private sector investment into areas most in need. Johnson must also build relationships across the children and young people's voluntary and community sector to develop preventative work and not risk accusations levelled at Livingstone's administration of using patronage to support a handful of organisations."

When reading this interesting piece I began pondering the tensions between Conservative political rhetoric and reality. When does intervention become "nannying"? When does "targeting" become favouritism? When does spending on preventative work in deprived areas become "waste"? And at what point does a libertarian Conservative become an interfering social engineer?

At Guardian Politics: Johnson & Youth Crime

A piece I wrote for the Politics blog on Friday:

The best thing about Boris Johnson’s mayoralty is his very public commitment to addressing youth disaffection and crime. Damaged though he was by the undoing of Ray Lewis, development of policy proceeds. On Wednesday the Evening Standard’s Pippa Crerar reported Johnson’s plans to raise a budget of £100 million from within GLA funds and bring together existing organisations to greatly enlarge youth provision in the capital. This would be in addition to the (roughly) £80 million secured for this purpose from the government by Ken Livingstone and to whatever City philanthropists pour into Johnson’s Mayor’s Fund when it is launched in the autumn.

Mayor Johnson On Met Chief (Again)

He's told the Times:

“I’ve got a bigger personal mandate than any British politician in history...more than a million votes when you count second preferences. Londoners in four years’ time are going to hold me to account for crime, for the safety of their streets. They’re going to hold me to account for whether buses feel safer again and whether the Tubes feel safer again and whether we’ve done anything to tackle knife crime. In those circumstances, I think it’s only right that there should be a considerable measure of democratic control and accountability for the police chief.”

Sir Ian, I suppose, would argue that a "considerable measure" already exists. A thought: is Mayor Johnson starting to feel the full weight of public expectation about his anti-crime strategy?