Crime
How mandarins sabotaged a rare prison success story
Britain’s prisons are in crisis. So, naturally, Whitehall has managed to snuff out one of the few organisations that might…
The prison early release scheme is already a disaster
Four days after he was released from HMP Wandsworth, Michael Bogle was back inside. The 38-year-old had served 11 of…
Britain has become a chancer’s paradise
They sound like something from the late-Soviet Union, and in many ways they are. Rent tribunals are coming to a…
Lawlessness is not inevitable
John Major’s time in government was fraught but, between the Maastricht wrangles, ‘Back to Basics’ and the cones hotline, one…
My answer to the shoplifting epidemic
Shouts in the street caught my attention. As I rounded a corner, I saw the aftermath of a botched supermarket…
Grand Theft Crypto
Last week North Korea pulled off the biggest heist in history when state-sanctioned hackers stole $6.3 billion from the Binance…
Nick Love, brute of British cinema, on the beauty of crime
Nick Love makes irresponsible films – that’s what people say. When he did The Football Factory in 2004, the BBC…
There is no such thing as a clean execution
There are times when the absence of Jonathan Swift is acutely felt. One such moment came at the end of…
How right-wing are labradors?
Lab test Labour MP Jenny Riddell-Carpenter described black labradors, pubs and warm ale as a ‘far right fantasy’. Do labradors…
A radical solution to the prisons crisis
This Halloween, punters at a silent disco in Shepton Mallet’s former prison will be dancing on the graves of executed…
Christa Pike should be allowed to live
Coincidentally with the sad passing of Esther Rantzen, who spent her last couple of years campaigning for assisted suicide in…
Lindsay Clancy and the inversion of feminism
In January 2023, Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children in her basement and then tried to kill herself. On August…
The young men of Middlesbrough just don’t care
No one looking back on the last fortnight could say that Middlesbrough didn’t make the most of its time in…
The insanity of the Lindsay Clancy sympathizers
In 2023, Lindsay Clancy, a former labor-and-delivery nurse from Duxbury, Massachusetts, strangled her three children to death with exercise resistance…
How ‘defund the police’ ideologues laid waste to Portland
Portland’s downtown area, though not without a certain residual hippy charm, increasingly resembles the Dunkirk of May 1940. Standing on…
The pernicious rise of the Fake Fuzz
The Harrow Council ‘enforcement officers’ might have been more extreme in their language than other members of the Fake Fuzz,…
The lessons from Henry Nowak’s murder
I wonder how many readers have ever heard of the name Kriss Donald? The young Glaswegian was just 15 years…
Japan isn’t as safe as you think
I was robbed in Tokyo recently, an experience as unexpected as it was distressing. Despite long years in London, plus decades of…
Does a propensity for crime depend on one’s DNA?
Kathryn Paige Harden’s research suggests some genetic connection – but this is not scientific determinism, and ‘real moral choices can’t be understood biologically’
Shameless Britain: we are a nation of shoplifters
It’s been more than a week since Sean Egan, a manager at Morrisons in Aldridge, announced that he’d been sacked…
Letters: Ban PPE graduates from public office
Dark Greens Sir: Both your leading article and Angus Colwell’s cover piece (‘Zacked Off’, 28 March) are bang-on. Although I…
Tradecraft secrets: a choice of crime fiction
Spy thrillers from James Wolff and Alex Preston reviewed. Plus: a third Rilke novel from Louise Welsh and a rediscovered classic from Duff Cooper
Organised crime is targeting artisanal food
Organised crime has a new focus: high-end food production. The latest victim is Wildfarmed, a UK-based, regenerative flour business co–founded…
Why is crude oil measured in barrels?
Crude estimates Why is crude oil measured in barrels? — From medieval times onwards, all sorts of commodities were measured…
Dark family secrets: Repetition, by Vigdis Hjorth, reviewed
With a haunting crime at its heart, this bitter, brief novel leaves one wondering uncomfortably whether it might be a memoir in disguise
