Tom Gash - Criminal: The Truth about why people do Bad Things

Tom Gash

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CRIMINAL

The Truth about Why People Do Bad Things

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Allen Lane is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

First published 2016

Copyright Tom Gash, 2016

The moral right of the author has been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-241-96044-8

For my family

Sources and acknowledgements are given in the notes. Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders, and the author and publishers will be happy to make good in future printings any errors or ommissions brought to their attention.

Tis strange but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction.

Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto XVI (1824)

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

George Bernard Shaw

For West Germany in the 1980s, the mystery was motorcycle theft. When West Germany won the UEFA European Football Championship in 1980, such thefts were close to a record high. Over 150,000 motorcycles were stolen each year and vehicle crime in general was becoming a top priority for police and politicians. West Germany was struggling with other problems: violence had also increased throughout the 1970s. But motorcycle theft was a particularly pressing concern. It cost German citizens hundreds of millions of euros in todays money and left victims increasingly concerned for their safety.

Then something changed. From 1980 to 1983, motorcycle thefts fell by a quarter. And the decline accelerated, as they fell by another 50 per cent over the next three years. In 1986, just 54,000 motorcycles were stolen one third of the number only six years earlier.

Such seismic shifts are not easy to explain at first glance. The And they were still simple to hot-wire and steal. Yet something happened that within six years slashed motorcycle insurance costs and meant that each year 100,000 German motorcycle owners were saved from being victims of theft.

The secret behind this surprising drop in crime is profoundly important. It begins to unlock many of the hidden truths about crime and its causes. It indicates the ways in which crime can be decreased, illustrating how some countries have succeeded in spending taxpayers money wisely and have reduced crime, while others have wasted billions and allowed their populations to suffer countless avoidable murders, assaults and thefts. And it exposes as myths many of our most deep-rooted beliefs about crime, human nature and society.

In 2005 I had no idea that Germany had experienced this drop in crime, let alone the reasons for it. I was a young graduate employed by a consulting firm to find ways of making companies more profitable. But that year I was appointed as an adviser on home affairs in the Prime Ministers Strategy Unit not because of any outstanding qualifications I had but because it was a time when both the Civil Service and politicians looked kindly on those with private-sector experience. I enjoyed writing a leaving note saying that I was off to do drugs, crime and alcohol with the Prime Minister. The minor hardship of saying goodbye to generous expense accounts was more than offset by my excitement at the prospect of playing even a small part in helping the country to reduce crime.

On my first day, I was struck by the contrast between the grand faade of our office in Admiralty Arch and the buildings run-down interior. The shabby room where I sat with two computer screens on the go was where I started to discover facts such as that of German motorcycle theft. But it was also where I began to realize that my work would take place against a turbulent backdrop: there was a passionate battle of ideas about the nature of crime and its causes, one that shaped many of governments decisions about how to tackle crime. In meetings with the Prime Ministers closest advisers for I met Tony Blair very rarely two competing but compelling theories of crime always emerged in some form. And when I spoke to friends about my job and they volunteered their own views about what really causes crime or what the government should really do, they spoke in phrases that betrayed their adherence to one of the two opposing camps.

Much of my work at the Strategy Unit and subsequently has involved questioning the truth of these conflicting views and the strength of their foundations. Both are highly persuasive and both are repeated frequently in various forms, but they represent fundamentally contradictory attitudes to human nature, government and society.

Our two views of crime are seen so frequently that it is possible to find them in the aftermath of most criminal cases. Take the debate that followed the riots that spread from London to other major English cities in 2011.

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, blamed the riots on Irresponsibility. Selfishness. Behaving as if your choices have no consequences. Children without fathers. Schools without discipline. Reward without effort Crime without punishment. Rights without responsibilities. Communities without control. Some of the worst aspects of human nature tolerated, indulged.

Some on the political left called for a different response, however. While condemning the rioters, they were more sceptical of the benefits and fairness of tough sentences, pointing out that the (mostly) poor rioters, who came disproportionately from ethnic minority backgrounds, had in some sense been pushed into rioting by their circumstances.

Those like Diane Abbott who emphasized that social factors had contributed to the rioting also pointed to the behaviour of the police as an aggravating factor. The riots were, after all, triggered by the police shooting of a black man and, though it was later ruled that his killing was lawful, people in Tottenham had long argued that the black community was over-policed and under-protected. Black men in London were by many calculations at least six times more likely than whites to be stopped and searched without any reasonable suspicion. Whereas Cameron and many others focused on the individual choices leading to the riots, this group emphasized collective responsibility for creating the conditions for rioting. Whereas Cameron and those like him focused on the need for tough policing and sanctions, this group emphasized the need for social support. Whereas Camerons account saw the justice system as part of the solution, this group generally perceived the justice system as part of the problem.