Crime
The conservative appeal of drug gangs
According to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, the easing of lock-down will be accompanied by a rise in crime…
‘Britain’s Dreyfus Affair’: a very nasty village scandal
It has been described as Britain’s Dreyfus Affair — the wrongful imprisonment in 1903 of a half-Indian solicitor George Edalji…
Beware the hobby bobby
‘Anything you say may be given in evidence. Do you have anything to say?’ I looked at the baby-faced police…
Is the hottest new podcast, The Apology Line, worth sticking with?
With the arts world still largely in hibernation, the launch of a big podcast is as close as we get…
Cruelty and chaos in Karachi
Karachi, Pakistan’s troubled heart, is known to cast a seductive spell over residents and visitors alike. In Karachi Vice, the…
Is it time to reopen technology’s cold cases?
One of the staples of crime drama is the ‘cold-case squad’. This allows programme-makers to add period detail to the…
Who killed Jane Britton in 1969?
The problem with telling stories about Harvard is that Harvard, if it teaches anything these days, teaches distrust of stories.…
Why New Yorkers are fleeing the city in droves
New York Back when people used to read newspapers, they called it a ‘human interest’ story. Now it appears as…
I’m now considered a freak in New York
New York It’s nice to finally be in the Bagel, a place where the cows have two legs and no…
New York is a paradise for criminals
New York New York, New York, once a wonderful town/ The people are crap and the mayor’s a clown/ The…
Bas Javid: Why I joined the police
There’s no such thing as a typical week in policing and this last one was no different. It started on…
A murderer among us: I was Dennis Nilsen’s boss
I was Dennis Nilsen’s boss
Letters: We must sing again
Growing pains Sir: James Forsyth (‘Rewiring the state’, 4 July) shocked this loyal Spectator reader with the following: ‘Even before…
Letters: Why Hugh Dowding deserves a statue
Police relations Sir: As a former Met Police officer, with a similar background to Kevin Hurley, I was surprised how…
Letters: Police must focus on deterring crime, not responding to it
Deterring crime Sir: Rod Liddle is right to highlight the politicisation of the police as a source of their inadequacies,…
The police have become too politicised to function
Forces have become too politicised to function
To save black lives, police top brass must face reality
To save black lives, top brass must face reality
Jeffrey Epstein really was a streak of slime
Did Jeffrey Epstein kill himself or was he murdered — and frankly who cares? Actually, having watched the four-part Netflix…
Is change on the horizon in Baltimore?
Crime-ridden Baltimore finally dodged a bullet this week. The bullet, in this case, was former mayor Sheila Dixon, who nearly…
Abolish the police. Then what?
One of the best rules of thumb to emerge from systems theory is Stafford Beer’s famous statement: the purpose of…
The roots of riot
That LEGO set or Louis Vuitton bag you’ve always wanted can be yours free if you just wait for the…
Locked up in lockdown
COIVD-19 has turned us all into prisoners: draconian lockdown orders, solitary confinement, monotonous food, limited fresh air and exercise, irregular…
What is organised crime doing disposing of rubbish?
Criminal gangs are growing rich on public-sector contracts
‘I was a tortured, obviously brilliant child’: James Ellroy interviewed
James Ellroy is occasionally quoted as saying he’s the greatest American crime novelist ever. The man sometimes called the ‘demon…