What the world is reading about Britain

The cover story of the international edition of Time is about “Britain’s mean streets”. The article presents a litany of depressing statistics about children in Britain and why we now have so much violent street crime.

One of the reasons we have so much bothersome street crime is the police’s attitude to it. Revealingly, Time reports that when a group of central London residents talked to the police about how to deal with a spate of attacks in the neighbourhood they were told: “Don’t go out unless you have to”—which is hardly a solution to the problem.

As Clive Davis writes–from personal experience–the attitude of the police to this kind of crime is all wrong. It is based on the premise that nothing can be done about crime and that catching criminals is virtually impossible. Until this mindset changes, this country will never get a grip on the situation let alone deal with the root causes of it.