Table Of ContentThe wicked, the selfish and the violent, are — according to Peter Hitchens —
freer from restraint than they have been since the age of Charles Dickens. His
trenchant and provocative book sets out to show that much of today’s debate
about crime and punishment is based on mistaken beliefs, misunderstood or
massaged figures and cheap slogans.
He points out that in the years before the First World — a time in which millions
lived in wretched slums or survived on breadline wages — the mass of people in
prison were there for offences that would be considered trivial today. Hitchens
sets out to explain the astonishing increase in record crime between 1921 and
2001 which — even allowing for population growth and different methods of
calculation — has risen from 100,000 offences per year to more than five
million.
His powerful and counterintuitive conclusions make challenging reading for
those on the Left and on the Right. He warns that our current approach to law
and order will soon threaten the personal freedoms of the peaceable majority,
while still failing to control crime. However he suggests that a society can
remain free if it clearly and decisively punishes wicked actions and concentrates
on preventing crime and disorder, rather than detecting it too late. Such a society
will not need identity cards, CCTV cameras, DNA databases or state powers to
read e-mails. It will not need to spy on or restrict the many millions who go
about their lives in a lawful and peaceful way. This country, he argues, must
choose between the supposed human rights of wrongdoers and the liberty of all.
About the Author
PETER HITCHENS is a well-known and controversial commentator, a
columnist for the Mail on Sunday and a frequent broadcaster. His first book, The
Abolition of Britain, made an impact on both Left and Right with its argument
that Britain had chosen the wrong future in the 1960s, and that Thatcherism had
not only failed to halt the moral and cultural revolution launched by the Left, but
had in many ways accelerated it.
The Abolition of Liberty
Peter Hitchens
ATLANTIC BOOKS
London
Copyright page Originally published in Great Britain as A
Brief History of Crime in 2003 by Atlantic Books, an
imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.
This revised and updated edition published in 2004.
Copyright © Peter Hitchens 2003
The moral right of Peter Hitchens to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
The author and publisher wish to thank the following for permission to quote from copyrighted material:
David Higham Associates for Chronicles of Wasted Time by Malcolm Muggeridge (1979); Simon &
Schuster for The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom (1987).
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Paperback ISBN 978 1 84354 149 3
E-book ISBN 978 1 78239 773 1
Printed in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham Atlantic Books
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd Ormond House
26–27 Boswell Street
London WC1N 3JZ
www.atlantic-books.co.uk
Dedication
To my parents
Epigraphs Society cannot exist unless a controlling power
upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less
there is within, the more there must be without.
Edmund Burke There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and
silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation.
James Madison
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Your papers, please
Chapter 2: The causes of crime
Chapter 3: ‘Bobbies on the beat’
Chapter 4: The slow, bureaucratic death of George Dixon
Chapter 5: Making bad people worse
Chapter 6: Out of the barrel of a gun
Chapter 7: Cruel and unusual
Chapter 8: Evil drug-dealers
Chapter 9: Twelve angry persons
Chapter 10: Institutional defeatism
Chapter 11: Justice denied
Postscript
Preface
Jonathan Swift said that you could not reason a man out of a position that he had
not been reasoned into in the first place. That is why I have, with some sadness,
ripped two chapters out of this book, originally published in April 2003 as A
Brief History of Crime. In truth, I ought to have known better in the first place.
As I wrote that book, originally meant to explain what had gone wrong with the
English criminal justice system, it became clear to me that I had stumbled on to a
much bigger subject. The more I researched, the more it seemed to me that there
was a threat to the liberty of the English – and British – people, emanating from
their own trusted government. This threat was gathering and increasing, largely
unnoticed, and it faced no serious opposition. It was even more important than
the issue of unchecked crime and disorder, though linked to it.
I am convinced that the only way to affect politics in this country is to influence
the left. As I described in my 1999 book The Abolition of Britain, the left now
holds power in almost all the important cultural and moral citadels of the
country, as well as in government. I do not believe that all its supporters
intended many of the bad results which their policies have had. I continue to
hope that, if I can persuade them that those results truly are caused by their
ideas, they may change their minds – as I have done. Any political book which
does not reach the left might as well not have been written. Influencing the
counsels of the Tory Party is about as much use in British politics as gaining the
favour of the Habsburgs would be in present-day Continental diplomacy. In any
case, the Tory Party is, if anything, even more hostile to my sort of thinking than
is the Labour Party. In its declining years it has become far too ready to reach for
the false solutions of pseudo-conservatism, at home and abroad – unrestrained
market forces and confrontations with foreign bogeymen. It is afraid to be
genuinely conservative, and almost entirely closed to original or unconventional
ideas. It is considered brave for Conservatives to adopt the dreariest and most
played-out policies of the Fabian mainstream, but it is foolhardy for them to say
or think anything genuinely reactionary. The Conservative Party is actually more
likely than any other political force to pronounce the cliches ‘You can’t put the
clock back’, or ‘Change is inevitable’. The arrival of Michael Howard as Tory
leader diminishes any chance that it will make a serious effort to defend liberty,
Description:Crime is a political football - both left and right are terrified of seeming "soft" on the issue, but for all their efforts, or apparent efforts, crime rates continue to rise. Clearly something needs to be done. But what? Peter Hitchens argues that the time has come to re-examine the criminal justic
