Friday, May 27, 2011

BEHIND THE TV FANTASY

Every evening on the TV you can see programmes where some dastardly criminal is brought to justice by some ingenious detective. Every crime committed in these dramas is solved. It is all very satisfying, but of course it is a complete fantasy. "Just one criminal jailed for every 93 crimes. Just one criminal is jailed for every 93 offences committed, figures showed. A total of 101,500 offenders who were convicted last year were handed an immediate custodial sentence representing less than eight per cent of all those sentenced, according to the Ministry of Justice. But separate figures from the British Crime Survey show a total 9.5 million crimes were committed in England and Wales during the last 12 months." (Daily Telegraph, 26 May) As long as we have a property based society we will have crime, and despite the efforts of Inspector Morse, Taggart and Miss Marples the vast majority of them will go unsolved. RD

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