By Professor John Robertson OBA, former Faculty Research Ethics Chair, UWS
As I watched the above, excellent but deeply disturbing BBC documentary series (two parts), I was cast back 55 years to a night in September 1969. I was to attend Glasgow School of art, the next morning and I could not sleep for anxiety about the next day.
I wasn’t worried about the course, I was worried about Glasgow. I’d never been and my head was full of images of knife and meat cleaver attacks, from TV news reports and my dad’s Daily Record. It was newspaper then.
In the end, I went, it was fine and did not experience any violence but I did have good reason to be anxious in a way that my daughter, attending Glasgow University, in the 2020s did not.
As the programme reveals, violent crime, including murder, was at a far higher level than today, across Scotland. Before watching the programme, my memories of Glasgow in 1969 were of a good time. The violence happened unseen around me but for many it was all-to-real.
Everything has changed:
Education campuses, including in Glasgow, are far safer than everywhere else in the UK:
Why has this dramatic transformation happened?
There will be many factors involved but, these?
Link: The Hunt for the Worlds End Killers – BBC iPlayer
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Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
These are all convincing reasons for the drop in crime levels over the years and in particular since 2007. SNP policies deserve credit for this.
However one strange thing is that you never see police on the beat anymore which you might thin might cause an increase in crime. One aspect of this in my local area (Clarkston in Glasgow) is that vehicles frequently park on zigzags at pedestrian crossings. I haven’t reported this yet so maybe no-reportage of that kind of offence maybe (partly) accounts for the lower figures?
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‘you never see police on the beat anymore’
Crime has moved indoors?
No lads hanging about on street corners?
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Well in England you just see them beating up peaceful protesters up, is being on the beat?
I saw one in the local coop yesterday buying a sandwich….
though I did see a couple of cops last week in the local shops as if some misdemeanour had occurred, so all indoors, yes. 😉
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Whit? Feart to go to the Art School. At that time, 69′,Garnethill was part of the former Northern Division of the then City of Glasgow Police force, the oldest in the world. Although not on that beat, I patrolled nearby, and we prided ourselves on keeping people as safe as possible, although Sauchiehall St could be tricky come the weekend.
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