Crime shock shakes the media: more on page 16

Crime shock! Shocking crime news! News of a shocking nature to do with crime! But hang on: it is on page 16 of The Times? How can this be? When we have shocking news of a crime, it is a shock indeed to see it on lowly page 16 when it should be front-page news. The trouble is that it is – shock – good news.

Quite extraordinarily, there is a decline in heroin and cocaine use, and that is reported to be linked to fewer incidences of acquisitive property crime – burglaries and thefts to you, members of the jury. The Home Office has reported that a significant fall in offending is linked to a reduction in Class A drug use.

While welcome news, maybe we are better at locking our windows at night? We no longer have those car tape players that were beloved of petty criminals who spoilt many a happy night out when returning to the car we find the window smashed in and our favourite cassette tape of David Bowie singing Let’s Dance, along with the machine itself, long since gone to the local friendly fence and, from there, literally up someone’s arm.

Nothing was safe in those
days in your car. I speak from experience: not even a tartan travel rug with nothing underneath it was safe.

I still rue the day a friend left my camera in his car, in full view, for three days until someone did the decent thing and stole it.

So where have all the ‘junkies’ gone? Is it the case that they are now all sipping camomile tea and discussing psychoanalysis and socio-trends on Newsnight? They can’t all be doing Open University courses, surely?

Maybe it is no longer fashionable to be a washed-up ‘junkie’. Maybe the passing of the likes of Lou Reed has made a difference; maybe we all want to actually live a bit longer and have realised that life does
not come with the soundtrack to Trainspotting.

Maybe we are all doing triathlons or watching the Great British Bake Off and deciding that we would rather follow Mary Berry’s recipe for a good time, or is it all that success at cycling? Or maybe people are in prison for longer?

Whatever the reason, it is of course a good thing that there appears to be less destructive drug use. It would be great too if we could get the gun-crime figure down at the same time and stop everybody knifing each other outside night clubs but I do not want to be churlish.

One day, I am sure there will be some interesting statistics to do with longer sentences to see if all of that means that if a discrete population stayed longer inside there was a disproportionate reduction in overall offending.

Shame, though, that good news was stuck on page 16. Of course, the last thing we want
is politicians thinking that the country no longer needs lawyers. Long live page 16. SJ

Felix is the pen name for a barrister practising in London

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