Crime
The rise and fall of the yakuza
For the first time in history, an organised crime ‘yakuza’ boss has been sentenced to death in a Japanese court.…
Is burglary on the rise again?
Long before the official numbers began to rise, back in 2014, it was clear that knife crime was on the…
Boris’s crime crackdown will be harder than he thinks
Can crime be beaten with a beaten down police force? The government certainly hopes so. Today, the Prime Minister launched…
Domestic violence affects us all
Since the first Covid-19 lockdown last year, cases of domestic abuse and subsequent deaths have risen. In England and Wales,…
World gone lazy
‘Where’s the car?’ said my wife Alice, interrupting my Zoom meeting on Saturday morning. ‘It’s where you left it,’ I…
The shooting of a journalist – and the dark world of Dutch organised crime
In an attack that has rocked the Netherlands, a leading Dutch crime reporter is fighting for his life in hospital…
High life
New York The acerbic writer Gore Vidal was once asked which period of history he would choose to have lived…
High life
New York The Big Bagel is getting so bad that even the baddies are demanding the fuzz do something. As…
Trans offenders are skewing crime statistics
Tonia Antoniazzi’s speech in the House of Commons this week was remarkable, not because of what she said – the…
Inside stories
Prison-based podcast Banged Up, now in its second series, is far more uplifting — and less soapy — than its…
How to get a police record
I couldn’t quite believe it when first I read the newspaper subscriber’s letter. Columnists for the Times and Spectator do…
High life
New York Ha, ha! What London turned down, the Bagel accepted with alacrity, namely the poor little Greek boy. And…
Mercurio rising
When a drama begins with news of a ‘Chis handler’ receiving ‘intel graded A1 on the matrix’ that causes a…
The politicisation of Sarah Everard’s death
A woman called Jenny Jones, now elevated to Baroness Moonbeam, or something, in the House of Lords has proposed a…
Barometer
Calculated risk It is a year since Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College team published the paper that inspired the government to…
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…
A three-pipe problem
It has been described as Britain’s Dreyfus Affair — the wrongful imprisonment in 1903 of a half-Indian solicitor George Edalji…
Real life
‘Anything you say may be given in evidence. Do you have anything to say?’ I looked at the baby-faced police…
Sitting pretty
With the arts world still largely in hibernation, the launch of a big podcast is as close as we get…
Cruelty and chaos
Karachi, Pakistan’s troubled heart, is known to cast a seductive spell over residents and visitors alike. In Karachi Vice, the…
A brief history of luck
One of the staples of crime drama is the ‘cold-case squad’. This allows programme-makers to add period detail to the…
A macabre legend
The problem with telling stories about Harvard is that Harvard, if it teaches anything these days, teaches distrust of stories.…
High life
New York Back when people used to read newspapers, they called it a ‘human interest’ story. Now it appears as…
High life
New York It’s nice to finally be in the Bagel, a place where the cows have two legs and no…
High life
New York New York, New York, once a wonderful town/ The people are crap and the mayor’s a clown/ The…
