Thursday, August 21, 2008
Blaming Affluence for Crime? That's a bit rich...
On Tuesday, spiked-online published my article Blaming Affluence for Crime? This was written specifically in response to New Labour MP David Lammy's article in last week's New Statesman, the UK's left-leaning political weekly. It seems Lammy's main concern is to blame and attack affluence and consumption for fuelling the spate of tragic teen murders in London this year. His hypothesis represents a dramatic turn around on long-established leftish thinking, which always identified poverty as having some influence on anti-social behaviour. David Lammy's article 'Youth Violence Is Not About Race' can be read here
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5 comments:
I don't rate your article.
Partly it is the dismissal of 23 murders of teenagers in London as "rare, isolated crimes" which left me wondering how many dead children you would consider to be a sizeable problem.
But mostly it is your complete inability to distinguish between affluence and consumption. By confusing the two you have turned criticism of a culture that raises children to be consumers, but not producers, of wealth into a ridiculous strawman about wealth causing crime.
Given the number of teenagers who live in London, 23 murders are indeed rare, isolated crimes. The point here is not to shrug and suggest 'it is no big deal', but rather to point out that it is impossible to draw sociological conclusions from these individual tragedys.
Your suggestion that teenagers are lured by easy money, of consumption without having to work for it, is based on prejudice rather than any hard fact. True, consumption emphasises individual passivity over active, purposeful action, but expectations that we should want the good life, of decent clothes, home and a car, are a good thing. It raises further questions about how we can raise material standards across the board in society.
Conservatives have often been ambivalent about the market, especially how it leads to individuals having some choice over their own lives and raises expectations for greater material security. The appeal to the market for conservatives, however, is the disciplining effect of full-time employment. From what you are saying, it seems the best way to tackle rare crime is to put all young people on production lines and pay them as little wages as possible.
Given the number of teenagers who live in London, 23 murders are indeed rare, isolated crimes.
How many murdered children in London would be necessary for it not to be considered "rare"? Or perhaps I should ask, how many times the national murder rate should the murder rate for young Londoners, particularly young black Londoners be before it is an issue?
Your suggestion that teenagers are lured by easy money, of consumption without having to work for it, is based on prejudice rather than any hard fact
Not my suggestion, it was the suggestion of the article you were replying to.
That said, if you don't think young criminals are into overt, status-seeking consumption (eg. on jewellery and clothes) I do wonder where you are living.
Hi Oldandrew,
It's not a question of numbers per se, it is whether there is an identifiable cause for these needless murders. I would argue that each tragic case is caused by specific factors, though the media's amplifcation of knife crime ironically encourages teens to carry knives as 'protection' - with devastating consequences.
At the moment, the number of teens killed is around 0.8 per 100, 000 teenagers - one of the lowest figures in the world. Each single tragedy is still one murder too many. But thankfully the UK doesn't have teen homicides running into the tens of thousands as it does in places like Brazil.
'Young criminals' may indeed be into easy and instant gratification and thus are lured into crime. But the murders that have existed in London and elsewhere don't appear to be motivated by robberies for cash or expensive trainers that have gone wrong.
If easy money and the desire for consumption without hard work is rampant, how come teenagers are not robbing banks and post offices? If this was widespread, surely there'd be an increase in armed robberies?
I live in North London, so I'm hardly cossetted out in country village.
Your blog looks interesting, btw.
Does poverty or affluence cause crime?
It's simple if you're a member of a Labour Government.
It's poverty that causes crime when the Tories are in power, and "affluence" when Labour is.
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