Theodore Dalrymple in the City Journal on last year’s riots:
It turns out that Thompson had 20 previous convictions, including at least one for violent robbery. Since the police in Britain discover the culprit in approximately 5.5 percent of crimes, and since the commission of crime is not distributed randomly across the population but concentrated in a relatively small proportion of it, a reasonable supposition is that Thompson—unless he was such an incompetent criminal that he was caught every time he offended—had actually committed between 100 and 400 crimes before he turned to arson. What, you might ask, was such a man doing at liberty? Well, most importantly, he was providing a living for the lawyers who defended him when he was caught: he was what one might call a criminal Keynesian.
If you like that, you’ll love these:
Second Opinion (and Kindle eBook – also available from iTunes)
Anything Goes (and Kindle eBook – also available from iTunes)
Not With a Bang but a Whimper (and Kindle eBook – also available from iTunes)
Life at the Bottom (Kindle eBook – also available from iTunes)
Our Culture, What’s Left of It (Kindle eBook – also available from iTunes)
If Symptoms Persist (Kindle eBook – also available from iTunes)
If only this Thompson character had taken The Gospel Classics’ attitude to rioting he wouldn’t now be looking at five years or so in clink:
