January 25, 2004
Crime and punishment in the UK
Remember the recent flap when a BBC show's organizers promised to have a participating MP introduce a new law of the viewers' own choosing, only to backpedal, howling with outrage, when the choice fell on giving homeowners the right to use deadly force against intruders?
Perhaps this shouldn't have been such a surprise; as we've noted before, polls have repeated shown that British attitudes towards crime, punishment, and self-defense are very close to what one finds in America, despite very different national policies.
In any case, there's another survey now being reported in the Sunday Times Review that would seem to point in the same direction:
To date, 1,432 readers have responded to the hypotheticals at The Sunday Times website or by mail. Their responses are extraordinarily weighted towards the Number Three answers that define what I refer to as the Cops as opposed to Progressives: the same Three answers that the criminal justice elites I interviewed so seldom gave.There is one area, however, where the Brits play for keeps, as another Times article notes:For six out of the seven hypotheticals, the Threes had an outright majority, sometimes amounting to more than 80% of the responses.
Nothing too ambitious can be made of these results, because they are not produced by a representative sample. But The Sunday Times’s readership is notably well-educated and affluent, which should give pause to those in the elites who try to argue — with breathtaking condescension towards ordinary people — that tough opinions about justice are a matter of a moral panic stirred up by the tabloids.
The sharp flash from the camera caught Ernie Harbon by surprise and he glanced down at the speedometer on his dashboard. He was only travelling at 38mph and it was a quiet country road. He scanned the wide, empty carriageway ahead of him but could not see a road sign telling drivers the speed limit.Two weeks this hardened malefactor received.When the £60 penalty fine for exceeding the 30mph limit dropped through his letter box some days later the 62-year-old painter and decorator decided to challenge the decision. He would not pay up and nor would he accept the three penalty points on his licence. It was, he argued, unfair to penalise him when the speed limit on the road in his home county of Derbyshire was not clear.
Little did he realise that by last weekend he would be serving time in Leicester jail for his minor transgression, imprisoned for the non-payment of his fine.
Harbon’s story, although extreme, is not as unusual as one might think. Last Sunday Martin Narey, the head of the prison service, admitted that jails are now overwhelmed by motorists locked up for minor violations. . .And if you don't get locked up, there are other ways to make you pay:Underlining his point, it emerged last week that in 2002 15,059 people were jailed for motoring offences, compared with 10,184 for burglary.
Last week Sunday Times Driving carried out an international survey that highlights how the British motorist is punished more harshly (not to mention taxed more) than those in Germany, Holland, Spain and France. Fines can vary from state to state in the US, so we picked Ohio as a typical example and again found figures that made Britain’s fines regime seem brutal. . .The article also links to a few horror stories, where motorists were fined for eating or drinking while driving, having an empty windshield washer fluid tank (on a parked car, no less!), and leaving the engine running while stepping out to kiss the wife goodbye.Travelling at 36mph in a 30mph zone here would result in a fixed penalty fine of £60 with three penalty points on the offender’s licence. Of the other countries surveyed, only in France would the licence be endorsed for travelling 6mph over the limit. In Germany, the fine is just £10, and in Spain travelling 6mph over the limit carries no fine at all.
This month in Britain, a new automated fixed penalty fines system went live to ensure that everyone whose road tax disc expires is fined £80. In France, Spain, Germany and the US there is no comparable fine. In Holland the charge for the equivalent offence is just £66.
A parking fine in London will set a motorist back £80, or £60 elsewhere, compared with £31 in Holland, £8 in France, a maximum of £24 in Germany and £20 in Ohio.
Posted by David on January 25, 2004 5:54 PM
Where's Thatcher when you need her?
Posted by: Dale on January 25, 2004 9:01 PM
I believe I'd declare war on those cameras and folks that enforce the traffic regulations.
Posted by: SwampWoman on January 25, 2004 9:05 PM
> I believe I'd declare war on those cameras
I've heard the cameras do suffer quite a bit of vandalism.
Posted by: KP on January 25, 2004 9:20 PM
A red light violation (via photo radar) in Sacramento, California is $350 (~200 pounds). We are not far behind!
Posted by: circ du greg on January 25, 2004 9:26 PM
red light violation...
while an afficionado and frequent user of "bloody-oranges" (sometimes so bloody they look like the St. Valentine's Day massacre) I must admit that a red light violation is much, much more serious than a speeding or parking ticket.
Barreling through a stoplight has a very high probability of catastrophe (p=0.1-0.25, maybe) vs speeding (p=0.00001 or less). Still, the Brit traffic laws are insane. And the cameras are suffering more than even the redcoats did in 1776.
Posted by: hey on January 25, 2004 10:18 PM
If Brits had more guns, they could use the ticket cameras for target practice...
Posted by: Crazy Bob on January 25, 2004 10:19 PM
If the Brits had more guns, they WOULD use speed cameras for target practice.
Posted by: David on January 25, 2004 10:38 PM
I'm surprised they haven't taken to using cricket bats on those cameras, for practice.
Posted by: Bastard on January 25, 2004 11:00 PM
Perhaps British citizens might want to visit http://www.federalist.org and look at the historical documents. The preamble to the Declaration of Independence may be especially relevant to their current situation.
Hey, it worked for us.
http://www.federalist.com/histdocs
Posted by: Samuel Adams on January 25, 2004 11:22 PM
How about a little ingenuity? Potato guns anyone? :)
Or, no one pay their fines ....the whole of Britain in the bailey?
Car swarms anyone? How about telly burnings while we're at it, to put the Baghdad Broadcasting Co out of business. ;)
Posted by: quark2 on January 26, 2004 12:30 AM
Once again I see the big fist of big government in Europe and it always frightens me the way you all continue to vote for more and more of it.
Posted by: Michael Hiteshew on January 26, 2004 2:09 AM
The Brits have no revolutionaries left. Anyone with that kind of spirit left generations ago for Australia or the United States. There is no hope for the remainder.
Posted by: Fred Boness on January 26, 2004 6:50 AM
Umm....people seem to be missing a point here,this has nothing to do with public safety or order,you Brits have a hi-tech speed trap that seems to exsist solely to raise revenue.What's revealing is the mentality,more speeders than burglars in prison?Well,robbing someone is mere crime,refusing to pay a traffic fine is defiance of the State,and that defiance must be crushed,the feudal elites divine right to rule must never be questioned.
America,land of the free,really isn't that far behind.
Posted by: Michael on January 26, 2004 8:19 AM
My view is that it is a mistake to have law enforcement be a profit center. This just increases that chances for abuse (just look at the many horror stories with drug laws allowing property confiscation). All fines should go to something like non-government affiliated charities.
(BTW, one of the few funny scenes in the movie Johnny English is his encounter with a speeding camera. It is worth a rental just for that.)
Posted by: ray_g on January 26, 2004 10:27 AM
Actually, the constrast is probably more stark, since Ohio has always been considered the mecca of extreme traffic enforcement. It is no accident that the most prominent radar detector company started in Ohio. Though a bit dated, reading the experience of the Cannonball Run, the old outlaw race accross America is entertaining. All those guys could talk about was Ohio, and in later races they would add miles to their trip just to avoid going through it
Posted by: Warren Meyer on January 26, 2004 12:37 PM
The best way to kill a Gatso is to put a bunch of old tyres round the pole and set them on fire. Or so I understand.
Posted by: David Gillies on January 26, 2004 2:21 PM
How do the cops know whether a parked car has an empty windshield washer fluid tank?
Posted by: C Camp on January 26, 2004 4:42 PM
In this particular instance, the police apparently asked the owner if they could inspect his vehicle -- then, to his surprise and astonishment, gave it a bolt-by-bolt going over.
Posted by: David on January 26, 2004 6:14 PM
Red Light Violations
The problem with red light cameras is that they induce drivers to slam on the brakes for a yellow, and in that way have caused rear-end accidents (stop snickering!!). Especially when the authorities, wanting more ticket revenue, shorten the yellow light period to catch more people over the line when the light turns red.
Posted by: Dave on January 26, 2004 11:55 PM
yeh
Posted by: me on April 20, 2004 2:27 PM
I HAVE BEEN ISSUED WITH A SUMMONS FOR GOING THROUGH A RED LIGHT.I was approaching a yellow light when the emergency services were persuing from behind me. I was uncertain which direction the vechile was going to take. I made the decision not to slam my breaks to possible cause a chain reaction pile up behind me or hinder the access of the emergency services and continued through the light onto the junction. Not at any stage when driving through it did I meet another vechile the opposiste way. This happens all too often especially with police vechiles as you hear them coming and the next you know they are right behind you expecting you to move out of thier path. There needs to be more infromation to car drivers what the poilce expect us to do in these situations. To prove my intentions I will need to find evidence that the emergency services were on the road at the time of my offence but who do I contact ?a emergency vechile can be on a road at any time, will the location of this vechile be noted at the time of a call out as if this is the case there will be an exceptional amount of data where police vechiles are everyday. Therefore through no fault of my own I will be giving points and a fine. In these situations the public may be reluctant to assit with the emergency services in fear they may end up speeding, going into a bus lane or in my situation
Posted by: SAN on October 1, 2006 10:41 AM
I made the huge mistake of trying to get out of the way of an ambulance. I triggered a speed camera a 43 mph in a 30 limit (dual carriage way, 2 lanes each way)
The ambulance triggered the camera at 39 mph, 2 seconds later.
The ambulance service didn't even bother to answer my letter.
I went to court, at the cost of about £1000, and got an absolute discharge, which means no fine and no points.
Unfortunately, I now have a criminal record. The real pain that this means I need a visa to visit the USA. The visa only lasts as long as my passport, and has to be applied for in person in London each time. The whole fiasco has cost me many times more than the cost of taking the points and the fine.
The system is arranged like that so that prosecutions are easy, fines roll in and the people responsible for road safety can be seen to be "doing something". They are just as well rewarded for prosecuting those trying to help as those who knowingly break the law. In fact, those who have shown their public spiritedness by trying to help are less likely to knee the court officals in the groin and are probably seen as a soft target.
The law is quite clear. You cannot go into a bus lane, edge over the speed limit or go through a red light ever, for any reason. If you feel that the courts will be lenient, or if you have already got a criminal record, and you are feeling extremely public spirited, you might want to risk it. I can garuantee that no-one will thank you for it. You will just be fined.
The present enforcement methods are a huge encouragement to drive badly in such conditions.
Posted by: Malin Dixon on December 24, 2006 6:15 PM
gmail.com