The British public today endure some of the world's worst crime levels.
According to the government's own estimates, 132 million indictable
crimes alone are committed every year, the vast majority of which go
unrecorded and undetected. Burglary is rife; street crime burgeoning and
violence is escalating to unprecedented levels. Fear of crime means that
many of us - especially the vulnerable and the elderly - have become
prisoners in our own homes, leaving predatory criminals free to roam our
streets.
In this meticulously researched and passionately argued study of the
contemporary British justice system, David Fraser offers a sobering
indictment of post-war British governments, who have not only overseen
but also fostered this spectacular and terrifying rise in crime. Almost
without exception, governments - and the civil servants and academics
who abet them - have sought to persuade us that criminals are victims of
society and that they are best rehabilitated within the community rather
than punished inside prisons. So pervasive has this 'anti-prison
propaganda' become that few of whatever political complexion are now
prepared to question its truth.
However, as David Fraser cogently argues, community supervision and
probation orders have simply left criminals free to reoffend, while the
criminal justice system's near obsession with the well-being of
criminals has come to override its concerns for their victims, whose
interests and sufferings are callously ignored. Moreover, he suggests
successive governments' failure to carry out what is their first duty -
to protect their citizens - threatens to undermine our democracy, as
more and more people - exasperated by the blatant injustice of the
justice system - take the law into their own hands. Britain has indeed
become 'a land fit for criminals'.
