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Walter's Blog

Reflections on recent events, plus the occasional fact
free rant unfiltered by rational argument.

"If you want to read a blog to get a sense of what is going on in Hong Kong these days or a blog that would tell you what life was like living in colonial Hong Kong, this blog, WALTER'S BLOG, fits the bill." Hong Kong Blog Review

31/5/2019 0 Comments

Mobile Phones & Crime

A large body of evidence shows that long-term crime rates are declining. That’s not only in Hong Kong; it’s a trend seen across all modern societies.

Surprisingly, no one has a coherent all-encompassing explanation of why. (Yes, I know knife crime is surging in the UK, and there are other blips out there.)

Like their predecessors, today’s senior police officers bask in the glory to claim their policies brought about the change. Uncomfortable as it is to state this, in reality, the police’s ability to influence global crime-trends is minimal.

Granted, short-term impacts in fixed areas are possible. Across the generations, societal factors are more critical ingredients.

A new intriguing study points to the emergence of mobile phones as pushing crime downwards. This study aroused my interest because it counters a conventional narrative.

During my time in the Hong Kong Police, it was common to view mobile phones as crime enablers. Driven out of sight by the technology, enforcement against certain crimes proved challenging. I’m sure that’s true.

Still, there is an upside and a bigger picture. Drug trafficking is a prime example. The study out of the USA suggests mobile phones helped reduce crime rates, including a 19 to 29 per cent decline in homicides from 1990 to 2000.

Let’s examine this. In the past, drug traffickers needed to control territory to conduct their trade. That may be a street corner, a sector of a neighbourhood, a night club or a bar. This need for physical space brought opposing gangs into direct contact, with conflict as they vied for the ground.

With the arrival of the mobile phone, the need for transactions at fixed locations disappeared. Traffickers and users hooked up via messaging to arrange a drop.

Thus, the gangs did not need ‘turf’ to dominate the drugs trade. The ‘turf’ moved to cyberspace, where a physical confrontation between rival gangs is impossible.

Also, the possibility of ‘robbery’ by rivals or opportunists decreased. With the traffickers on the move, taking out a competitor proved difficult. In turn, the research established that the need for a large gang dissipated.

With no turf to protect, fewer confrontations and scores to settle, a leaner business model emerged.

For the trafficker, the fixed location makes them vulnerable to enforcement action. Besides, the mobile phone benefited small-time operators. As a consequence, drug prices fell with increased competition.

Your friendly neighbourhood drug dealer delivering to the door — pizza style — is an attractive option. Venturing out to gangland to buy drugs from a menacing thug does not appeal. In effect, it’s argued, the mobile phone gentrified the drug trafficking game.

At first glance, the evidence in the US research is compelling. As the cell-phone network spread, researchers tracked changes in crime patterns. Drilling down into the data, specifically victim/culprit relationships, the link emerges.

Yet, some researchers have come out to question this study as too simplistic. They assert the data is far from robust in establishing course and effect. For them, the evidence does not hold up across time, across cities, or across countries.

We know that Hong Kong has seen the disappearance of the ‘street traffickers’ except in entertainment areas. Thus, it may be possible to conclude similar processes at work here. I’d like to see more data before affirming that.

My gut feeling — mobile phones have had negative impacts and some positives. Yes, nothing is exciting or novel in that assertion. And I know quantifying these effects with reliable statistics is tricky. The well-recognised unreliability of official crime statistics is part of the problem.

What is certain is that these days, people can report incidents with ease, gather evidence by recording on phones and then share it. Add to that the deterrent impact.

For example, as trouble flairs in a dispute, and a fight may occur, out come the phones to capture the moment. Seeing this, the adversaries sometimes back off.

My conclusion, for what it’s worth, is that technology is making old-school crimes harder to commit. CCTV, facial-recognition, the tracking of movements and pattern spotting algorithms all help.

But fear not, bad guys are also harnessing that technology. The so-called computer-crimes, online frauds and the like, all herald that change. We need to remain vigilant.

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30/5/2019 2 Comments

Are the tectonic plates of politics shifting?

Mrs May is no longer a lame duck prime minister; she’s a dead duck. In response, every Tory with a whiff of ambition has thrown their hat into the ring. When I started writing this piece, the tally was ten contenders. It’s now eleven. We can expect more. This race is going to be fun to watch.

You’d expect calls for a general election. That won’t be happening. Why? Well because the opposition Labour Party is in meltdown. Corbyn’s sitting on the fence fell flat with the voters. Or they don’t trust a man who is so dogmatic that if you dare to vote for another party, you enter the wilderness.

Politics is the art of the possible, except for old-style lefty types who steamroll anyone who dares to think differently. For them, it’s a short distance from expulsion to the gulag.

Who is crunching the numbers at Labour Central? The Brexit Party cannibalised UKIP, the Tories and a section of former Labour voters. That means traditional Labour voters were in the majority voting for the Lib Dems and Remain parties.

Corbyn appears intent on alienating these same voters by expelling someone that voted as they did. He’s made the wrong call again. Maybe that tremendous political intellect, Diana Abbott has the spreadsheet.

Even a town steeped in the history of the Labour movement, Merthyr Tydfil, has rejected Corbyn. You get the impression there are two Labour Parties; the London elite, and in the post-industrial towns, the restless working folks.

That second category is looking for a new political home given Labour’s performance. After all, Corbyn is hardly the ‘working class’ hero he purports.

At this stage in the electoral cycle, with the ruling Tories in an appalling mess, you’d expect Labour to surge ahead. Wrong. Corbyn is intent on missing every open goal.

He was never able to deliver a decisive blow to Mrs May during PM questions, by dithering or rambling on too much. The body language of Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy, gave away his frustration. Expect him to make his move soon. More blood will flow. So May is gone. I suspect Corbyn will join her given his fragmenting support.

Much of this would be easy to dismiss except the real consequences for people. With all the political oxygen sucked up by Brexit, industries are faltering, and no one has a strategy to address the decay.

The latest victims are the steelworkers of Scunthorpe. Five thousand workers face the dole, plus 20,000 men and women in the supply chain. With British Steel in administration, the impact will be severe.

When the Redcar steelworks closed in September 2015, a surge in suicides — especially amongst men — swept through the town.

What comes with that is domestic violence, mental health problems and alcohol abuse. In that instance, the blame landed on EU rules for hampering an intervention that could save a community.

Scunthorpe produced ultra high-quality steel. It built the Jodrell Bank Lovell radio-telescope that allowed us to study quasars, pulsars and see deep into space. With that gone, not only are communities devastated, but the UK slips behind in the technology stakes.

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage has pulled off the most astonishing political feat. He’s taken a party that didn’t exist six weeks ago to the head of the line.

His message was simple — for too long, the main political parties have ignored whole sections of British society -- especially those places overwhelmed by hardships and demographic changes.

The Brexit Party took a page out of Barack Obama’s book. They harnessed existing social network platforms, and grassroots campaigners to spread the message. In the process, the Brexit Party bypassed the mainstream media helping feed the narrative of bias in the BBC and others.

It worked because these ignored communities are looking for answers, and Farage spoke to them. Counter-intuitively, the fact that the Brexit party had no manifesto didn’t seem to matter.

It was surprising to watch that across the country, ordinary citizens challenged BBC reporters. Think back 30 years, when such would be unthinkable.

This change is partly due to perceptions of bias and such cases as harbouring sex offender Jimmy Savile. With their reputation trashed, people are questioning this once mighty institution.

At the same time, the whole process has turned much nastier. It started with milkshakes — laughed off as political theatre in the Guardian — then soon became bricks at a political rally in Preston.

Then we had the whole suicide bomber nonsense. Social media is feeding that frenzy. It’s not so much that people are in echo chambers, more like social media amplifies messages including distortions.

So, are we seeing the wholesale reshaping of British politics and a shift in public attitudes? Indeed, the two political behemoths, Labour and Tory, that dominated for so long are looking fragile. Brexit has exposed deep internal divisions.

At the same time, once favoured public institutions are under suspicion. That includes broadcasters, the courts and the police.

There is no paucity of people to blame, something that Farage exploited. But to go further, he will need to put some meat on the bone.

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Are the tectonic plates of politics shifting?

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