What must also be borne in mind, on the other side of the argument, is that victim surveys undercount the real number of violent offences, particularly when violence occurs within the family. On violent crime, therefore, we cannot be certain which of the two sets of figures is more accurate (though both point to a large increase, differing only in the matter of degree). As for other crimes, the sharp increase in recorded burglaries since 1987 is supported by the Survey. All in all, therefore, the BCS does not cast serious doubt on the fact of a large increase in real crime in recent years. But, it is not only the level — or more precisely the rate — of crime from year to year which bothers the general public; it is the long-term trend. That has been dramatically upwards. The figures for recorded crime — which are of course subject to some changes in recording practice over such a long period but which form the only continuous series — paint a very clear picture. And the fact that such a picture conforms closely to popular received wisdom makes it all the more convincing.
During the last half of the nineteenth century there was a marked fall in the crime rate, both as regards property and violent crime. The crime rate — that is the number of criminal offences per 100,000 of the population — did not increase substantially until the late 1950s. It then rose ever faster. The crime rate is now ten times that of 1955 and sixty times that of 1900.
Although of scant comfort, the explosion of crime since the 1960s is not just a British phenomenon. In the United States between the mid-1960s and 1990 the crime rate trebled and the rate of violent crimes quadrupled. The United States — more specifically life in America’s big cities — is still more violent than in Britain and Europe. Partly this reflects the number of guns on the streets (as opposed to in American homes, where the evidence is that they probably deter burglary); partly it reflects the number of murders and attacks associated with drug dealing. With these important exceptions, however, the picture is similar on both sides of the Atlantic. Property crime rates are now at comparable levels throughout the West. And we in Britain have to rid ourselves of the complacent assumption that we are immune from the trends we deplore in the United States because of our allegedly gentler, more communitarian culture. For example, in 1981 the rate of burglary in Britain was half that of the United States; in 1987 it equalled it; it is now higher.[92]
It is possible to quibble about the legitimacy of comparing statistics, both between periods and between countries. But the fact of what has happened in Western society over the last thirty years cannot be denied. Nor should its significance.[93]
Theorists and practical men alike have generally agreed that the primary purpose of the state is to maintain order. It is highly desirable that order should be upheld under law and that law should respect rights. But unless the state has the will and capacity to ensure order, not only bad but eventually good people will flout its authority. The law-abiding are demoralized when they see criminals getting away with it. Citizens and local communities tend to turn inwards, away from national institutions, losing confidence in the law-enforcement authorities and relying on degrees of vigilantism to protect themselves, their families and their neighbourhoods. And once that process of disintegration goes beyond a certain point it is all but impossible to reverse. This is the deeper reason why governments in Western countries should be concerned about the trends of rising crime and violence.
THE GROWTH OF WELFARE DEPENDENCY
If the sharp rise in crime over the last three decades is one startingpoint for social policy, the barely less dramatic onset of welfare dependency is another. (I shall suggest some connections later.) Since 1949, when the British Welfare State was effectively established, public spending on social security has risen seven times (in real terms), up from under 5 per cent of GDP to about 12 per cent now; it constitutes almost a third of total public expenditure. This real increase continued when I was Prime Minister, and since. Of course, to lump together contributory and non-contributory, universal and means-tested benefits — retirement pensions, housing benefit and Income Support for single parents — is somewhat misleading.
But these crude figures show two important points.
First, insofar as the share of public expenditure and GDP taken by a particular programme reflects the importance collectively attributed to it, British society (or at least British government) is asserting that Social Security is not only more important than other programmes — its relative importance is actually increasing. The Social Security budget is twice as large as the next largest, that is spending on health. More significantly, perhaps, it is six times as large as the budget for law and order.
Secondly, in spite of the large general increase in prosperity over the last forty years, there are more people making larger demands on the taxpayer to sustain their or their families’ living standards than ever before. Against this, it has been argued that in spite of the economic advance since 1979 ‘the poor have got poorer’. The latest official Households Below Average Income (HBAI) statistics suggested that after housing costs were taken into account the income of the bottom decile of the population between 1979 and 1991-92 fell by 17 per cent. But before housing costs it remained constant. And even without that gloss the figures are so misleading as to be materially false. ‘Incomes’ in this series of statistics do not reflect the real resources available to this group; in particular, they are not the same as living standards. Only about half of the group (excluding pensioners) were on income-related Social Security benefits. Many of this group who said they were earning nothing actually spent above the average for the population as a whole. And 70 per cent of those with ‘zero incomes’ before housing costs (according to the HBAI statistics) were in the top half of the nation’s spenders.
It is anyway probably wrong even to think of these people as a ‘group’. Its composition is constantly changing, as people’s circumstances change. So the figures provide no evidence that particular people’s incomes have dropped; and there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that their standard of living has risen. Most significantly, ownership of consumer durables — fridges, washing machines, central heating, telephones, videos and so on — in this group has increased dramatically. Given these facts, the crude picture painted of ‘the poor getting poorer’ is just not credible. By contrast, it is reasonable to conclude that the Social Security budget encourages anti-social behaviour, including dependency, and needs serious reform.
As in the field of crime, so in that of welfare dependency it is largely American scholars who have asked the boldest and most important questions. Charles Murray’s pioneering study, Losing Ground — American Social Policy 1950–1980, has demonstrated how benignly-intended Federal Government policies in the United States aimed at reducing poverty have actually had the perverse effect of increasing it in recent years. In making it less worthwhile to work, and less troublesome and more financially advantageous to have children outside marriage, while reducing the penalties for crime and weakening the sanctions against school misbehaviour and truanting, government has changed the rules of the game. Those with the shortest time-horizons and the least self-discipline or support from their families have responded all too readily to this new framework and have begun to form what Mr Murray and others have described as an ‘underclass’. In subsequent surveys of the British scene he has detected a similar development here, with its attendant signs of increased illegitimacy and crime rates.
92
I am grateful to Professor James Q. Wilson for drawing this and a number of other points in this chapter to my attention.
93
Although I refer to the rising crime and connected problems as a ‘Western’ phenomenon, I do so in full recognition that a virulent crime wave has afflicted the post-communist world. This is largely a matter of infection spread from the West which the post-communist states, lacking effective police forces and the institutions of civil society, Burke’s ‘little platoons’, have been unable to combat. By contrast, in the homogeneous and strongly group-oriented Japanese society, which in this regard is thoroughly un-Western, crime is remarkably low.