I love it when a plan backfires!

And it all looked so good on paper - a teenage crime tsar to bring policing right up to date and show that young people have a stake in society; Kent PCC Ann Barnes must have thought she had a sure-fire PR triumph on her hands.

Instead, she's landed with a year's bill for £15,000 - which will keep 17-year-old Paris Brown in rather more style than many hard-working adults - unless the girl can be persuaded to step down.

And that's not looking likely at the moment; Miss Brown has learned the lesson of 21st century media practice and has made a tearful public apology on camera so, in what is fast becoming a national tradition, she clearly feels free to carry on in the position she so dramatically disgraced.

The apology itself was a striking demonstration of the attitude engendered by modern educational theory with its incessant praise regardless of results and its focus on feelings rather than rational thought; the media, she said, had misinterpreted her words:

"...If I’m guilty of anything it’s showing off and wildly exaggerating on Twitter and I am very ashamed of myself."

Note that 'if' - by dismissing any suggestion of racism or homophobia and denying that her tweets referred to drugs, she has essentially ducked the blame completely; her public declaration of how she feels completes the winning formula.

In fact she is the victim here. To accuse her of politically incorrect opinions is clearly a hostile and subjective interpretation of her innocent words:

"I deeply apologise for any offence caused by my use of inappropriate language and for any inference of inappropriate views."

Sincere? Maybe, but you have to admit that's a suspiciously well-constructed bit of sophistry for a 17-year-old apprentice who, only a few days ago, was expressing herself in these erudite terms:

"Been drinking since half 1 and riding baby walkers down the hall at work oh my god i have the best job ever haha!!"

And therein lies the problem. Because it's difficult to see what exactly Miss Brown can bring to the table that justifies the salary she's being paid if that is how she behaves - and thinks - at work. Never mind the accusations of racism and the rest; it looks as if she is likely to be a bit rubbish at the job.

I don't want to join the media witch-hunt, which has been a far from edifying spectacle; my point is that almost any youngster barely turned 17 is bound to make a mess of something like this through lack of experience and maturity - I know I would have done.

Since Vance Packard first alerted the world to 'pester power', children have been adopting an increasingly central role in decision-making within Western families until they effectively hold the purse-strings. New Labour deliberately brought this trend into public life by repeatedly harping on about young people - or, in Blairspeak, 'yungpeeple', eliding it into a talismanic catchword to be wheeled out on every possible occasion.

And the young swallowed hook, line and sinker this politically expedient idea of their own importance. I'm sure that Paris Brown, really does believe that she is worth her hire and should stay in her post for a full year before going on to greater things. In fact she perfectly sums up a growing trend in Britain.

Given her reaction to this situation, I think it is virtually certain that she will eventually go on to join the ever-expanding army of public-sector workers promoted well beyond their competence but blissfully unaware of their own limitations.

Society prepares the crime;...

...the criminal commits it.
Henry Thomas Buckle

I came across a sad little news story recently about the theft of a gold necklace:

At about 11.30am on Saturday, the elderly woman was waiting at the bus stop in Bridge Street. A woman approached her and took hold of her hand, placing two gold rings in it and telling her they were free. The victim said she didn’t want them and the woman then placed a necklace over her head. The victim again said she didn’t want it and started to remove it. The woman then took the necklace off the victim, removing the victim’s own gold chain at the same time, before walking off.

Something about this rang a bell, so I did some digging around and tracked down a report from the Clacton Gazette in July 2010:

The woman approached the victim, who is in her 90s, and offered to sell her a necklace which she held it up against the elderly woman's neck. But when the pensioner got home she realised her gold necklace - worth about £200 - had been taken and that she was wearing the cheap necklace the woman had tried to sell her.

 A Google later and I had a surprising number of these thefts; for example, the Echo this week reports that there have been five cases in Southampton so far this year:

In the latest case on Wednesday May 4, just before 1.30pm, a woman was targeted on Portswood Broadway. When she said she did not want the necklaces around her neck, the women took her gold necklace worth around £1,400* and left her with a cheap one.

In fact, a brief trawl turns up a similar case in Kent in November, six cases in Ipswich and Lowestoft in December and others in Nuneaton (January), Bromsgrove and  Redditch (February) Camberley (March), Farnborough (April) and Sheffield (May) – and that’s only the ones reported online picked up by searching ‘theft +necklace’.

Perhaps the MSM haven't reported it because it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi of sensation - no violence, no trauma; just elderly women losing a bit of jewellery - but surely there must come a point when the sheer number of such crimes make them a news story? It’s all very strange – the local papers carry warnings to be vigilant but never mention that they are reporting more than a single isolated incident or localised cluster.

The modus operandi is virtually identical in each case. In only five of the 20 cases was the thief alone; all the other crimes were committed by pairs of women – on several occasions, it seems, the same pair - approaching a lone, often elderly victim at a bus stop in broad daylight and carrying out the same distraction routine.

Now it occurs to me that our town centres these days are positively heaving with CSOs, especially on Saturdays, so why has no-one picked any of them up?

Two reasons spring instantly to mind; the first is that Police forces do not seem to pool information on such trivial matters – except where thefts took place in the same police area, they have been reported as if without precedent. Thus a Kent sergeant could say 'This is quite a unique distraction technique’ when Lowestoft, Clacton and Ipswich already had cases on their books.

And secondly, there’s the small matter of the descriptions; the women are, without exception, of 'Asian' or 'middle eastern' appearance’ or ‘darkly tanned’ and most mention headscarves. But how does a CSO go about the surveillance of pairs of women ‘of Asian appearance’, however closely they match the descriptions?

Or more to the point, in today's Britain, who is going to take the risk of issuing that order?

*This has caused much speculation in the comments – who wears a £1,400 necklace to go shopping in Southampton?

Being prepared on a grand scale

“It's all very well and good preparing for a giant earthquake, but in the end you might as well plan for a meteor strike or a volcano.”

That was the opinion of an unnamed police officer after a three-day police exercise simulating a major earthquake striking our green and pleasant – and usually very static – land.

The event was officially described as ‘extremely unlikely’ and ‘unthinkable’; Britain may get between 200 and 300 quakes a year but the vast majority are so small that the only people going to get excited about them are seismologists who don’t get out much.

Granted, the £826,000 cost of the exercise is a lot of money, given the fact that we may never see an earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale, but one assumes the lessons learned could be applied in other circumstances:

‘The disaster, recreated near Portsmouth, caused motorways and apartment blocks to collapse, oil storage plants to be damaged and cars to start burning. In Merseyside the mock exercise involved creating an “urban street scene” complete with burning buildings, trapped “victims” and 40 smashed up cars.’

It doesn’t take an earthquake to cause any of these, as the inhabitants of Buncefield or Warrington could tell you. And if I’m ever caught in a disaster of that kind, I’d like to know that there was someone out there who had an idea of what should be done.

And, of course, if Lembit Opik is to be believed, there’s always the chance that there is an asteroid out there with our name on it.

On yer bike, Sunshine!

There’s a novel bit of thinking going on in Suffolk. A member of the CID has spotted a way of killing two birds with one stone by taking some of the hundreds of unclaimed stolen bikes recovered by the police and lending them to offenders on probation.

'The Integrated Offender Management (IOM) and PPO schemes aim to control offending behaviour of persistent offenders through a combination of rehabilitative interventions, compliance support, and robust enforcement in order to reduce re-offending and the commission of crime.'

Right, got it (I think). The idea is that the bikes will help offenders living in rural areas to travel to work, making them more likely to find jobs and thus reducing the re-offending rates. The scheme is being overseen by the Probation Service (who will, one hopes, screen out persistent bicycle thieves) and any bona fide owners who turn up will have their property restored to them.

So far so constructive, but something truly dreadful is being perpetrated here.

'Detective Inspector Richard Crabtree of Ipswich CID who came up with the Re-cycling Cycles scheme said, “Bikes will not be given to every PPO and are not to be seen as gifts. They will be on loan from the probation service to the PPO who will be responsible for their own cycle safety.

This is a well-intended scheme and a holistic approach to assist individuals who, for whatever reason have been on the wrong side of the law gain meaningful employment. If this trial is successful it may be rolled out across the county.”

Cringeworthy punning title? Check. Obscure acronym? Check: PPOs are Prolific and other Priority Offenders, of course – do try to keep up at the back! Touchy-feely caring terms? Check – holistic and meaningful to you too! And pointless management-speak? Check: why does it need 'rolling out' - it’s not a bloody Axminster!

DI Crabtree is obviously destined for higher things if this is a typical example of his mastery of the English language. He still has a way to go to match the experts in the field of what JuliaM calls ACPO-friendly jargon but meanwhile it’s a pretty good haul for buzzword bingo.