Risk-Averse Society

Today I came across a piece of work prepared by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and it looks at introducing the National Decision Model (NDM), which itself is an update to the Conflict Management Model (CMM). In effect it’s a process by which Police officers of all ranks justify what force is proportionate in the circumstances of each individual incident they deal with.

Anyway, I was reading a bit about why the NDM replaced the CMM and it all basically seemed to surround the principle that policing had become risk-averse and that society looked to eliminate risk completely, in what is a generally risk filled society.

So the basic idea was to accept the principle that there will always be some element of risk and instead of doing everything to reduce every risk, we should look at the risks, really assess which are likely to do the greatest harm then we should do what is reasonable to prevent those risks, but understanding that risk can never be reduced completely.

This basic idea made me consider whether we as a society have become risk-averse? I hate the old adage of ‘when I was a kid’ but as a kid I rode my bike without a helmet and elbow pads, I climbed large trees and skateboarded down some steps for fun. Yes I did fall off my bike, out of tree’s and fractured my arm skateboarding but I’m still here, I’m still the same old me, maybe a bit wiser for it.

In a society of over sixty million people there will always be murders, people will always die in car crashes, people will always commit suicide and people will always commit horrendous crimes. Whilst I would like to live in the ideal world where things are pretty and crime free, but I don’t, I live in the real world.

We as citizens must realise that there is a difference between negligence and a set of unfortunate and tragic circumstances. When tragic circumstances occur instead of taking the idealistic approach we need to look at the reality. Instead of finger pointing we need to look at what happened and how it could have been improved. What we must not do is point the finger and look for a scape goat.

Whilst this is one of my normal evening rants there is a point to this. I believe the starting block for changing our society for the better is our children. We need to adequately prepare them for their future as adults within a civilised society.

Whilst we should protect our children, equally we need to expose them to some risk. Whilst university education should be available to all those who want it to progress their own employment, we should also impress upon our children that whatever they decide is fine with us, instead of luring our children in to a false sense of security telling them its ok just to take part we should be pushing them to be competitive but equally show them the value of team work.

Our children are out future and we owe it to them to give them the best opportunity to succeed, in whatever form that takes. All parents want the best for their children and that’s understandable, but by the same token we need to guide them rather than force our own opinions on them. Adults make the best decisions when they are decisions based on what’s right based on all of the available information, the same occurs with children.

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Email : realchangerealpeople@ymail.com

The Candidate