Who you gonna call?

Peter Saunders, 12 February 2015

The other day, while visiting my parents in south-east London, my wife and I took our dog for a walk in the local park. There were several other people walking their dogs, but the peace was disturbed by a youth on a trail bike who roared across the park at full throttle and then, a few minutes later, roared back again – straight towards me. I waved him down, worried that he might plough into my dog. Predictably, our interaction was short and aggressive. My wife ushered me away before he could act on his threat to smash my head in, and he roared off.

This incident prompts two thoughts. One is that I had no idea who to call if I wanted to report an incident of anti-social or petty criminal behaviour like this. Phoning 999 would clearly have been inappropriate, for it was not an emergency, but standing in a park far from home, I had no idea of the number of the local police station. The NHS has enabled people to make routine, non-emergency health calls through the 111 service. Is there not a case for the police service to set up something similar? Using a simple, national number, callers could speak to a minor incidents switchboard which could then either log the details of petty criminal or anti-social behaviour, or redirect the call to an appropriate authority to deal with. Standing in that park, facing a snarling youth, it would have been nice to know there was someone I could have called for advice or assistance.

My second thought is that, when I was growing up, parks like this one were normally patrolled by park keepers. My friends and I used to go in fear and dread of the park keeper, for if we got up to mischief, trampling the flower beds, smoking on the swings, or cycling over the cricket square, he would soon appear in his peak cap and put a stop to it. But municipal parks and recreation grounds nowadays seem not to be supervised. Indeed, public spaces in general seem not to be supervised, other than by remote CCTV cameras. Cinemas used to have ushers or usherettes who would not only show you to your seat, but would literally shine a light on any unacceptable behaviour in the stalls during the film. Buses had conductors whose job was not simply to collect your fare, but also to ensure that people did not put their feet on the seats and to deter drunks from pestering other passengers.

But low-level public order jobs like these have disappeared in the modern world as government and the private sector alike have looked to maximise economies. I suspect this has turned out in many cases to be a false economy, for unsupervised, unregulated public spaces are a magnet for vandalism, graffiti and worse. Some years ago, I wrote a two-part paper called What are low ability workers to do when low-skill jobs disappear? (Download part one here and part two here.) Noting that new technologies and globalised product markets have reduced demand for low-skill labour (particularly men), I criticised the conventional government response, which has been to lengthen schooling and devise more training courses. The unpalatable truth is that some of us do not have the cognitive ability required to train successfully for new, high-tech jobs, which means a lot of this extra education and training is falling on stony ground. The result is that low ability workers are increasingly consigned to long periods on welfare benefits.

Some of these people, though, could make good wardens, caretakers, watchmen, ushers, bus conductors and park keepers. These are jobs that require common sense, reasonable physical fitness and a sense of responsibility, but do not need GCSEs or much in the way of training. Rather than having low ability men spend their lives on the dole, it would make a lot more sense to employ them to patrol our public spaces, just as their grandfathers used to do. This could even form part of what the Australians call a ‘work for the dole’ programme, getting people off welfare and into serious, worthwhile jobs that need doing. A policy that deters petty criminal behaviour and reduces welfare dependency at the same time? Worth a try.

Peter Saunders is the author of Beyond Beveridge: Restoring the contributory principle to retirement pensions and welfare benefits