As Britain’s summer of crisis continues, the penitentiary industrial complex could soon be overwhelmed. Not because of a lack of resources: estimates put the prisons’ budget at £4 billion. And it’s not for a lack of bipartisan thinking: the Labour …
Letby Truthers want a good story
“It was like staring at a Magic Eye picture,” Ravi Jayaram, one of the medics who first raised concerns about Lucy Letby, told the New Yorker. “At first, it’s just a load of dots… But you stare at them, and …
The Republican’s foolish war on the ICC
It’s not hard to understand why the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, took the unprecedented decision to seek an indictment of Israel’s prime minister and defence minister. To borrow from Bob Dylan, the times have changed, and sometimes …
The death penalty degrades America
Last week, having tried and failed to kill him with the more traditional lethal injection, the state of Alabama suffocated Kenneth Smith to death for his role in a 1988 murder-for-hire. In this unprecedented method, which the state has called …
Serial’s true crime
Within the past few years, a strange point of debate has circulated among the writers of thrillers and mysteries: given the violence inherent to the genre, what are our responsibilities when it comes to the crimes we portray on the …
Is it illegal to insult Captain Tom?
When the Comanche chief Tosahwi surrendered to Philip Sheridan in 1869, he described himself as “a good Indian”. “The only good Indian,” the General is said to have replied, “is a dead Indian”. This genocidal epigram has been adapted for …