ABSTRACT
In a pioneering analysis of ‘the state of crime in Scotland’ published in 1964, Shields and Duncan paint a bleak picture of crime trends across the country. Drawing on police statistics they reveal a 277 per cent rise in crime between 1927 and 1962, the product, they contend, of increasing material possessions, rising aspirations and ‘the diminution of formerly strongly held moral and religious scruples which in the past may have prevented those who could not obtain desired goods legitimately from helping themselves illegitimately’ (Shields and Duncan 1964:19–20). Yet amidst this depressing picture of an unrelenting rise in crime they highlight a small but significant example of success in tackling crime. According to their analysis of police data in 1954–5, Greenock, a town on the Firth of Clyde to the west of Glasgow, was ‘Scotland’s top housebreaking area’ (ibid.: 60). But over the next seven years, while Scotland’s recorded housebreaking rates continued to rise steeply, Greenock was alone in showing ‘a substantial decrease’ and had ‘fallen to seventh position in the housebreaking hierarchy’. What accounts for this remarkable change in Greenock’s fortunes? Analysis at the time suggested ‘certain special measures of crime prevention carried through from March 1955 by the Greenock police’.
These included special police patrolling of a criminal area in the town; attempts by the police in co-operation with other local authority departments to improve physical and social conditions in this area; co-operation with the local gas and electricity authorities to replace pre-payment meters with credit meters; and the setting up of the Police Juvenile Liaison Office scheme (the first in Scotland). Along with these measures there is interesting evidence of civic enterprise and of high civic morale in the coming into being of the Greenock Arts Guild and the publication of the ‘civic code’, prepared in 1952 by the Corporation, assisted by clergy of the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. This code … affirms the obligation of all citizens in the home, in the community, at work and in spiritual matters.
(cited in Shields and Duncan 1964: 61–2)