Roe v Wade … It was, among other factors, the reality that the pool of potential criminals had dramatically shrunk. ibid.
To discover that abortion was one of the greatest crime-lowering factors in American history is, needless to say, jarring. It feels less Darwinian that Swiftian. ibid.
Crime, like virtues, are their own rewards. George Farquhar, Love and a Bottle
‘I know right from wrong. It’s just that I choose to do wrong.’ Kid Criminals I, kid inmate, Channel 4 2015
Of all sex offenders in America, it’s estimated over a quarter are children. ibid.
Ian Huntley, Stuart Hazell, Mitchell Quy and Karen Matthews are some of the most notorious criminals of recent years. All convicted for different crimes but all with one thing in common – they all lied on camera about the crimes they themselves committed. The Lying Game: Crimes That Fooled Britain, ITV 2015
‘Liars will talk a lot but not about the event.’ ibid. clinical psychologist
In a closed society where everybody’s guilty the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. Hunter S Thompson
For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium. Albert Camus
Is it a crime to fight for what is mine? Tupac Shakur
I just spent eleven and a half months in a maximum-security jail, got shot five times, and was wrongly convicted of a crime I didn’t commit. Tupac Shakur
Crime is the product of social excess. Vladimir Lenin
He who allows oppression shares the crime. Desiderius Erasmus
Poverty is the mother of crime. Marcus Aurelius, attributed
Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions. Agatha Christie
Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime. John Ruskin
Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year and spends very little on office supplies. Woody Allen
The famous slogan ‘crime does not pay’ is a total absurdity, in particular when a criminal state is behind it, and that’s crucial here. Noam Chomsky, Class War: The Attack on Working People
For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit. Noam Chomsky, Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World
To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace. Malcolm X
The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic. G K Chesterton, The Blue Cross: A Father Brown Mystery
But many a crime deemed innocent on earth
Is registered in Heaven; and these no doubt
Have each their record, with a curse annex’d. William Cowper, The Task VI:439
Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim. Bertrand Russell, letter to Ottoline Morrell 17 December 1920
Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society’s understanding. Batman Begins 2005 starring Christian Bale & Gus Lewis & Michael Caine & Liam Neeson & Katie Holmes & Cillian Murphy & Gary Oldman & Tom Wilkinson & Morgan Freeman et al, director Christopher Nolan, mentor to Batman
We need criminals to identify ourselves with, to secretly envy and to stoutly punish. They do for us the forbidden, illegal things we wish to do. Karl A Menninger
Behind every great fortune there is a crime. Francis Bacon
Jamaica is emerging as a rare success story in the battle against crime in the Caribbean. Caribbean with Simon Reeve III, BBC 2015
We’ve located the gene that makes myoglobin. Code of a Killer ***** lecture, ITV 2015
As unique as a fingerprint. And there it is in black and white for all to see. ibid.
Eu - bloody - reeka! ibid.
Like it or not, the science saved us. ibid.
Usual crazies. A couple of mediums. One of them is convinced the killer is a police officer which is why he’s getting away with it. Code of a Killer II, rozzer to investigator
You’ve got him. You’ve finally got him. ibid. Roberts to investigator
Colin Pitchfork received two life sentences for the murders of Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth. ibid.
Reporter: You think it’s a crime?
Her: No I don’t. Rob the Mob 2014 starring Michael Pitt & Andy Garcia & Nina Arianda & Ray Romano & Griffin Dunne & Michael Rispoli & Rank Whaley & Burt Young & Yul Vasquez & Samira Wiley & Bill Raymond & Adam Trese et al, director Raymond de Felitta
It’s almost over, darling. Every detail was perfect. We’ve done it. The perfect crime. House on Haunted Hill 1959 starring Vincent Price & Carolyn Craig & Elisha Cook & Carol Ohmart & Alan Marshal & Julie Mitchum & Richard Long et al, director William Castle, Dr Trent to Annabelle
These are extraordinary times. With the United States and Britain on the verge of bankruptcy and committing to an endless colonial war, pressure is building for their crimes to be prosecuted at a tribunal similar to that which tried the Nazis at Nuremberg. This defined rapacious invasion as ‘the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole’. International law would be mere farce, said the chief US chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson, ‘if, in future, we do not apply its principles to ourselves’.
That is now happening. Spain, Germany, Belgium, France and Britain have long had ‘universal jurisdiction’ statutes, which allow their national courts to pursue and prosecute prima facie war criminals. What has changed is an unspoken rule never to use international law against ‘ourselves’, or ‘our’ allies or clients. In 1998, Spain, supported by France, Switzerland and Belgium, indicted the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, client and executioner of the West, and sought his extradition from Britain, where he happened to be at the time. Had he been sent for trial he almost certainly would have implicated at least one British prime minister and two US presidents in crimes against humanity ...
Like them, Tony Blair may soon be a fugitive. The International Criminal Court, to which Britain is a signatory, has received a record number of petitions related to Blair’s wars. Spain’s celebrated Judge Baltasar Garzon, who indicted Pinochet and the leaders of the Argentinean military junta, has called for George W Bush, Blair and former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar to be prosecuted for the invasion of Iraq – ‘one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history: a devastating attack on the rule of law’ that had left the UN ‘in tatters’. He said, ‘There is enough of an argument in 650,000 deaths for this investigation to start without delay’ ...
Today, the unreported ‘good news’ is that a worldwide movement is challenging the once sacrosanct notion that imperial politicians can destroy countless lives in the cause of an ancient piracy, often at remove in distance and culture, and retain their respectability and immunity from justice. In his masterly Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, R L Stevenson writes in the character of Jekyll: ‘Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter ... I could thus plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and, in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete’.
Blair, too, is safe – but for how long? He and his collaborators face a new determination on the part of tenacious non-government bodies that are amassing ‘an impressive documentary record as to criminal charges’, according to international law authority Richard Falk, who cites the World Tribunal on Iraq, held in Istanbul in 2005, which heard evidence from 54 witnesses and published rigorous indictments against Blair, Bush and others. Currently, the Brussels War Crimes Tribunal and the newly established Blair War Crimes Foundation are building a case for Blair’s prosecution under the Nuremberg Principle and the 1949 Geneva Convention. In a separate indictment, former Judge of the New Zealand Supreme Court E W Thomas wrote: ‘My pre-disposition was to believe that Mr Blair was deluded, but sincere in his belief. After considerable reading and much reflection, however, my final conclusion is that Mr Blair deliberately and repeatedly misled Cabinet, the British Labour Party and the people in a number of respects. It is not possible to hold that he was simply deluded but sincere: a victim of his own self-deception. His deception was deliberate’ ...