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i also have currently a group of addicts on my doorstep at all hours, shooting up and leaving paraphinalia, who lit a fire on another neighbours doorstep and have harrassed both, me my partner, and neighbours elderly and with kids, marginalised and otherwise ignored by the council building new flats over the road
we've gone to about 3 different charities for both adicts and homelessness, the council and community figures. no-one can help, no-one has budget to help. we're just referred to the police. when my neighbour caved and called the police they made a big song and dance turning up but what did they do? put the person in prison? clear them off? refer them to services which will not take them? the structural issue causing this still exists, policing it did nothing. fwiw they're back now, the issue isn't solved
when my house was bricked and my mum stalked when i was younger, she was quick to call the police, all they saw was a derranged old woman in poverty, i assume they only turned up in the first place because of the post code. they recieved funding increases every year since but the services which helped my mum have been nothing but cut year on year
i've been burgled while in birmingham, yet again police did nothing to assist, nor offer me or my housemates support in the aftermath (marginalised people stuck in a HMO leveraged for someones rent), just a crime number and a officer who informed me to "get an alarm" and was not going to pick up the phone any time soon nor called us ever again
i've had fights outside my appartment in worcester where someone called the cops, knock on my door and instead of taking my polite i didn't see anything insisted i must be on drugs because of my eyes and asked to come in, causing me to firmly decline and close the door, hoping they didn't come back
when my partner was robbed in uni the police came, locked up the "kown" guy and asked him to pay £200 to them, he didn't have this to his name, which is why he was stealing phones from women at the laundrette. when my partner reached out to them for victim support and follow up because she felt unsafe as a 19 year old in a strange city being robbed, nout nada, but did patronise her as a silly young girl who needs to be more careful and the big bad man has gone away now
let's not even get onto the compleat ignorance and participation the police enact when it comes to me being hate crimed as a faggot!
all these situations would have benefited from investing in non police based, community support agencies, to support victims and provide security, giving agency to people to be able to stand up to the person or the developer terrorising their community, even repair damage that had been done or pevent it from happening, none of them are addressed by "more police". policing with its current outcomes does not benefit the victim unless the victim is capital or needs to protect or replace their capital, so the exapansion of policing as reform, is useless to marginalised victims or those of violent crime.
i speak about this as this exact policy approach has been used against me and my wider community, and bought no end to the violence or discrimination, even when we were as scared as the neighbours you describe. all it bought was more policing of our bodies, actions and communities.
i'm not sure why i have to publically out myself like this to speak about non carceral police reform? i can only assume you believe me to be a Caricature of a person you've created in your head, there is a reason i described you as othering. there is a reason i phrased your critique without attacking your individual material factors, i don't know them, i don't know you, it's not important nor does it undermine the work numerous people have done before, and far better than i ever will, advocating for anti carceral reforms and police abolition.
seems like you have a chip on your shoulder
Maj-
Dude TBF you started it with your opening gambit and then the 2nd paragraph in response to BR.
Fwiw I think there were some excellent points made in your OP but all the anti-Waitrose agenda undermined it. Moreover, being tough on crime is not mutually exclusive to being tough on the causes of crime.
hugo7
Interesting you raise that. I live in an ex council block in Leyton and when I first moved in a gang of heroin addicts made our space their base of operations. They left needles everywhere, intimidated residents; one five year old girl witnessed them shooting up, and their mum got abused for asking them to leave. They burgled one of our elderly blind residents, and tried robbing the rest of us too. They nicked stuff from the local area and stashed it in our estate. They harassed the women on the estate. They shat in public and they set fires. They scared people.
Perhaps you genuinely are someone who would find that sort of thing less troubling than the 'privatisation of public space' - though I'd suggest that if you'd experienced it yourself, or through those you loved most in the world, you might revisit that opinion. You're of course entitled to it as is. But it suggests your experience of such things is entirely academic.
Longer term, it is of course a better strategy to eradicate crime not by punishing bad behaviour but rewarding good behaviour. But when you suggest that as the only approach, you effectively de-centre the victims. It's probably true to say that a rapist would benefit more from psychotherapy than prison, in terms of reducing crime; but his victims deserve justice too. Punishment and rehabilitation are both necessary for justice, but punishment is more important to a victim.
It's not the behaviour of a 'white gentrifier' or a 'landlord' or someone who 'isn't active in the local community' to want crime tackled. The young working class immigrant families in my block wanted the issue resolved even more than I did. And until Labour can say without shame that we are in favour of tackling crime and antisocial behaviour, we will be - rightly - excluded from government. This is something ordinary people care about. They are not insulated from it in the way that many who talk about the solely public health approach to crime are.