Brandon To is a Politics graduate from UCL and a Hong Kong BN(O) immigrant settled in Harrow
In my previous piece, I argued that good behaviour is no longer rewarded in modern Britain. Retail workers who intervene against theft risk dismissal.
But there is another half to the puzzle: bad behaviour is no longer punished.
For years, Britain effectively told shoplifters that stealing below £200 was barely worth police attention. The law, introduced in 2014, pushed low-value shoplifting into a summary-only process, creating the public perception that theft under £200 was “decriminalised”. Even the Government now admits this damaged public confidence and encouraged offenders to believe there would be minimal consequences.
That rule is finally being repealed. Good. It should never have existed in the first place.
Because once a country starts treating “small” crimes as acceptable, those crimes stop being small.
Londoners know this instinctively. They see it every day:
Phone snatching outside stations.
Teenagers intimidating passengers on buses.
Repeat shoplifters casually walking out of stores.
People openly fare-dodging in front of staff who know there is little point in intervening.
That’s why the people are frustrated, especially when politicians unthinkingly claim, “London is safe”, while these are the realities people face every day.
And the most revealing part? Criminals are often not difficult to find at all.
Every time the Metropolitan Police deploy live facial recognition technology in crime hotspots, arrests surge almost immediately. In Harrow town centre, the police arrested 5 criminals after deploying the system for just six hours. The Met’s own annual report recorded 203 deployments over the course of one year, resulting in over 2,000 true alerts.
In other words, many criminals are not hiding at all. They are roaming around London in plain sight because they know that the chances of consequences are low.
That is the real crisis.
Britain has slowly created a culture in which rules exist, but enforcement often does not.
Of course, there are practical constraints. Britain’s prisons are overcrowded, while the criminal justice system is under pressure. Not every offender can realistically be jailed immediately. But that does not mean behaviour should go unanswered
Other countries understand this far better than we do.
Singapore takes the harsh route. Public caning remains part of its criminal justice system for certain offences. Few Britons would support importing that model wholesale, but the underlying principle is important: the state must visibly demonstrate that crime carries consequences.
Japan takes a different approach. Its system relies heavily on restitution and social pressure. Offenders are often expected to apologise directly to victims and to compensate them financially, while families frequently feel a personal obligation to help repair the damage. Crime carries social stigma, not excuses. That social expectation helps explain why Japan maintains remarkably low levels of street crime despite using imprisonment more selectively than many Western countries.
Britain should learn from that mindset.
For first-time offenders committing low-level theft or antisocial behaviour, punishment should focus on immediate restitution and visible accountability.
If someone steals £100 worth of goods, repayment should not simply mean returning the £100. It should mean repaying double the value through fines or compulsory work (if the criminal cannot afford to pay on the spot). Parents or families of juvenile offenders should also be expected to participate in repayment arrangements where appropriate.
Then escalation must follow quickly.
A second or third offence should trigger harsher punishment, such as electronic tagging, or imprisonment for British citizens.
For foreign nationals, the line should be even firmer. Britain already struggles with enough home-grown disorder. We do not need to import more. Repeated criminality or persistent antisocial behaviour from visa holders should mean automatic visa cancellation and deportation, regardless of route or status.
And before the usual critics begin clutching their pearls, this is not “authoritarian”. It is civilisation.
When good behaviour is mocked and bad behaviour is tolerated, social trust collapses.
And that is where Britain is heading.
Good should be rewarded.
Bad should be punished.
At the moment, Britain is failing at both.