Another day, another report of a child stabbing another child. On this occasion, it was a 15-year-old girl in the comprehensive school in the former mining valley of Ammanford in Wales. She left three injured, including a fellow pupil, seriously …
How vice consumed Blackpool
Every online review for one of Blackpool’s brothels tells a sordid story. “I plan to visit nightly,” writes a punter whose wife has just died. “A depressing hovel,” claims another who took a teddy bear with him. A third admits …
Why did we forgive OJ Simpson?
Hours after the news broke that OJ Simpson had died from cancer at the age of 76, I was sitting in a conference room, listening to an elevated but meandering discussion on the topic of forgiveness. Could absolution be empowering …
Techno-admin will ruin your life
An older relative of mine — I’ll call her Jan — moved house a couple of years ago. She’s in her late seventies, and technology scares her: she doesn’t like the fact that everything is done via app or website. …
California’s aristocracy of lunatics
The standard TV image of a district attorney — or, prosecuting attorney — in the US is of a tough government lawyer passionate about putting bad guys behind bars. Or maybe the “DA” is a cynical, striving politician willing to …
Why are there so many botched executions?
How can a country as sophisticated as the United States botch executions with such monotonous regularity? On 17 November 2022, the State of Alabama tried and failed to kill Kenneth Eugene Smith, who had spent 34 years on death row …
The collapse of New York’s immigration dream
New York has always been powered by immigration. Over the 20th century, it was the Irish who built the subways and the Greeks who ran the supermarkets; now, Colombians watch over our children and Bangladeshis drive the cabs. Yet in …
California’s criminals need an audience
I was feeling an oddly serene mix of relief and pleasure and fatherly accomplishment, sitting in a barbershop on a sunny Saturday afternoon, watching my 12-year-old son get his hair cut roughly a month too late. As hanks of blond …
Can pluralism be low-crime?
My small Shires market town reported a handful of crimes a year when we moved here a decade ago. Over the past year or so, every garage on my street has been burgled. Only last week an escaping shoplifter shoved …
The Met’s firearms officers are political pawns
Say what you like about Suella Braverman and her mixed reception among the general population, but she continues to enjoy the support of a key political, if not electoral, demographic: the Metropolitan Police. Following the shooting of Chris Kaba on …
Russell Brand and the presumption of innocence
Should the presumption of innocence apply to Russell Brand in the court of public opinion, as it should in a court of law? It is a question that has sharply divided social media this past week, and both sides have …
Lucy Letby was an NHS monster
A sense of catharsis seemed to envelop Britain when it was announced that Lucy Letby had been handed a life sentence for her crimes. The appalling 10-month litany of her homicidal activities was over. Evil had been exposed. Justice had …
The West enflamed Haiti’s nightmare
Yesterday, as television and radio sets across Haiti issued warnings about a tropical storm churning across the Caribbean Sea, its residents could be forgiven for wondering what they did to deserve such torment. Already the poorest country in the Western …
The lethal liberty of Singapore
It is there in bold, red letters on every foreign visitor’s entry card: “Death for drug traffickers under Singapore law.” Once they’ve made their way past the indoor waterfall, passengers leaving the nation’s only commercial airport might catch a glimpse, …
Why looting has returned to London
Lockdown reportedly returned to Bexleyheath on Saturday. As rumours about an impending wave of “TikTok-fuelled looting” circulated on social media, shopkeepers debated whether it was safe to unlock their doors. Eventually they did, but only after a dispersal order was …
