Hooray for Sir Hugh

Hooray for Sir Hugh Orde, chief of the Association of Chief Police Officers, a figure in the British establishment who is at last prepared to criticise this absurd obsession we have in this country for piloting in "experts" from the United States of America (always the United States of America) to tackle whatever problem certain politicians think is not being adequately addressed by our own people – be it public order, drugs, performance of tube trains, funding of the arts, whatever. But policing and crime are the strangest cases of all – as I commented in a previous post, how absurd that we in the UK should take lessons from the United States, of all places, the nation that finds it needs to lock up 0.74% of its own citizens! Or, as Sir Hugh says about the plans from the Prime Minister to draft in US "Supercop" Bill Bratton:

I am not sure I want to learn about gangs from an area of America that has 400 of them. It seems to me, if you've got 400 gangs, then you're not being very effective.

If you look at the style of policing in the States, and their levels of violence, they are fundamentally different from here.

What I suggested to the home secretary is a more sensible approach, maybe to look across far wider styles of policing and - more usefully - at European styles; they, like us, are bound by the European Convention.

My sense is, when we've done that, we will find the British model is probably the top.

For a figure in the UK establishment to suggest we could usefully look at how anything is done in Europe, as opposed to the United States, is truly exceptional, and I salue Sir Hugh for this.

It is my suspicion, that I can't prove, it is just a thesis, that this implicit belief in the superiority of American expertise in the minds of many (principally right-wing) British politicians is a kind of reverse-colonialism. I think it started in the early to mid-twentieth century, as the USA replaced Britain as the most powerful nation in the world, and it is associated with the decline of British influence and prestige since then, our status becoming eclipsed by the superpower status of the USA. I think a kind of romantic-nostalgic feeling about the "sundering of the English-speaking world" developed at this stage in British culture, and you can trace this trend in the writing of figures like Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, John Buchan, and, of course, Winston Churchill (as great a writer as a leader), a feeling that with the loss of the colonies, of which the United States was the first to secede, Britain had lost its "best people" – its strongest, bravest, most adventurous folk, and that Britain's greatness would be regained, not through integration with Europe, but by some kind of ill-defined future "re-unification of the English-speaking peoples". (This phrase, or a similar one, was used by both Conan Doyle and Churchill).

This romantic world-view was, of course, completely unrealistic, and ignored the true nature of the United States, which was that it was a total cultural melting-pot, with huge contributions from the Germans, Poles, Irish, Italians, Jews, Hispanics, and Africans, it was not, from the mid 19th-century onwards, "basically British" in culture, and the fact that there was a linguistic and historic bond became increasingly misleading. But still, down to this day, British prime ministers and US Presidents seem to fell duty-bound, as a sort of sacred rite, to re-confirm the "special relationship" between the UK and the USA at regular intervals, though the phrase has little meaning. The "special relationship" is in reality a confirmation of the decline of the UK in world rankings since 1900, its failure to find a new place in Europe, and of a sad, head-shaking, kindly-uncle-like attitude on the part of US politicians who feel it best to play along with the UK "special relationship" delusion, for fear of making British even sadder by telling them to go and carve their own, modern path in the world.

The "get someone from the USA" reflex to solving problems in British politicians is part of the "special relationship" delusion and inferiority complex. So far as I know there is no equivalent in other European countries. I might get corrected on this, but I am not aware that the Portuguese regularly look to Brazil for problem-solving leadership, or the Spanish to Mexico.

The reason I salute Sir Hugh is that if we can get a grip on current world realities, in this case, that the crime-and-punishment culture is totally different in the USA to the UK, move away from this Transatlantic cultural fixation and start learning lessons from the way certain things in public life are done well by our far more culturally-similar European neighbours, who just happen to speak different languages to us, then I think we stand to benefit enormously. Who knows, the next stop on this road might be getting Dutch or Danish urban planners, who actually understand how to construct an environment that encourages cycling and walking, at work in our cities. That would be truly revolutionary.

What happens to justice in the ultimate car-centric society

It goes bonkers:

Enter the Marietta, Georgia, case of 30-year-old Raquel Nelson, which has been bandied about in the comments section the last few days. Last April, Nelson was crossing a street with her three children when her 4-year-old was struck and killed by a car. She was crossing at an intersection, but was apparently not in a designated crosswalk. The driver who killed her had been drinking, taking painkillers, and was blind in one eye. He also has two prior hit-and-run convictions. Nelson and her daughter were also struck and injured. Residents of Nelson’s apartment building have complained to the city about the intersection. The nearest crosswalk is a half mile away.

If we have as little to fear from overly aggressive prosecutors as supporters of Caylee’s Law claim, we could expect the prosecutor in this case to show some discretion and mercy for Nelson, right? Yes, she admits to jaywalking. Yes, she erred, and subjected her kids to unnecessary risk. But she just lost her son. It’s hard to fathom a more punishing, heartbreaking sentence. Moreover, the underlying “crime” here was a misdemeanor, one most of us commit every day. So mercy, right?

Of course not. Nelson was charged with second-degree vehicular homicide. Which is insane. She was convicted last week. When she’s sentenced later this month, she could spend more time in jail than the man who struck and killed her son.

Interestingly, the perspective of the "radical" US website from which this snippet is taken, though critical of this case, is not really critical on the grounds that I think UK and European readers of this blog would be. The "radical" US perspective is to see this as about "justice" that might be tempered by "mercy" in the case of an "accident", not about apportioning blame for deaths in a transport culture where the rules have been written by and for motorists: "She erred, and subjected her kids to unnecessary risk," says even this apparently "left-wing" US commentator, seemingly oblivious to where the actual blame for the death lies. And we don't read anything clear about what happened to the driver. But elsewhere we can discover:

Jerry L. Guy, the driver who admitted hitting the child when pleading guilty to hit-and-run, served a 6-month sentence. He was released Oct. 29, 2010, and will serve the remainder of a 5-year sentence on probation....

Guy was originally charged with hit and run, first degree homicide by vehicle and cruelty to children. Charges were later dropped to just the hit and run charge.

Court records show that Guy was previously convicted of two-hit-and-runs on the same day, Feb. 17, 1997.

The first hit-and-run also happened on Austell Road, but when Guy fled from that scene he hit another car, seriously injuring that driver and passenger, records show.

Guy pleaded guilty and received a two-year prison sentence, but was out in less than a year.

There are major cultural and legal differences between the UK and the USA. In the UK, thankfully, there is still no legal concept of "jaywalking" (though many British people have picked this term up from US sources, and use it, incorrectly). In the UK it is, at least in theory, legal to walk on roads and to cross them at any point (excepting motorways), though it is against the Highway Code to cross on zig-zag markings near zebra crossings. In the UK we are a long way from parents being prosecuted for negligence for allowing their children to cross the road in an unwise place, though the argument of negligence is often used in such cases by the lawyers for insurance companies to try to reduce civil damage claims (as they also try to paint cycling victims as "negligent" for not wearing helmets).

It seems to me to be bizarre that both Labour and Conservative UK governments seem to have been fixated with the idea of importing justice and law-and-order related concepts from the United States. From the United States of all places! The United States, which has 0.74% of its population imprisoned! The latest example of this is David Cameron's plan to put elected Police Commissioners in charge of fighting crime in the localities of the UK, a very American concept – an idea which risks the populism, inconsistency, illogicality and political reversibility that characterises US crime-fighting. It is not in the British tradition to elect, on an individual, personal basis, those involved with the administration of the justice system, nor is there the slightest argument for it. There is no more argument for it than for electing who should be in charge of the armed forces. These roles should be independent, professional ones, supervised in a general way by national and local elected politicians.

So far, that (occasional) repository of wisdom the House of Lords has blocked the elected commissioners idea, but the government is still saying it wishes to overrule them, and press ahead with it. This is a not very high profile political issue which is nevertheless of the highest importance. It is an issue people should agitate on, both on grounds of general good-sense, and on grounds of the possible effects on transport justice – with the possibility under elected commissioners of an even more populist, unfair treatment of road crime that gives even less justice to vulnerable road-users.

We don't want the UK going further down the law-and-order basket-case trail blazed by the USA. We don't want mothers imprisoned for having let their slaughtered children cross the roads.