Britain’s prisons are at breaking point. This month, 85,840 people are currently detained across prisons in England and Wales, with the estate operating at over 96% capacity. In 2023, 66% of prisons were operating above their original design capacity. The situation is desperate. In 2024, with fewer than 100 spare beds across the entire male […]
In that bonkers novel, ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, Hunter S. Thompson has a great line (well, in some ways, he has several) about crime in America: ‘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.’ But not even […]
David Lammy didn’t cover himself in glory this week in Parliament. Our Lord Chancellor chortled and guffawed while his shadow Robert Jenrick tried to hold him to account for the release in error of a registered child sex offender from HMP Chelmsford whose crime sparked national protests. The shelf life of ‘but the Tories’ as […]
Over 76,000 serious criminal cases are stuck in a court backlog. Of those cases, nearly a quarter have been in the queue for over a year. The wait to be heard in the magistrates’ court is even longer: 310,304 hearings were in abeyance at the end of March, equivalent to roughly three months at current […]
We are in the midst of a crime wave: shoplifting and snatch theft are the highest on record. There were over 500,000 shoplifting offences last year and over 116,000 phones stolen last year in London alone. Headline crime has also increased by 7% since last year. This is driven, chiefly, by large increases in fraud. […]
Much to the surprise of foreigners, Britain has never had a national police force, relying instead on 40-odd local forces since the 1960s, mostly covering one or two counties, but some bigger. Mark Rowley, who runs the Met, is unhappy. Earlier this month, he called for all existing forces to be merged into about 12-15 […]
Imagine this scenario: you host a dinner party in your home aglow with candlelight and conversation. On a polished oak shelf sits a delicate Cisk lager-branded ash tray, collected from a recent trip to Malta. Though not of great value, it holds sentimental charm, a quiet testament to travels past. As the evening draws to […]
For a Government which has had an absolutely torrid time of things since almost the moment it took office, the aftermath of last summer’s riots was a rare high point. For once, Keir Starmer got to strike a convincing pose as the tough-minded former prosecutor cracking down on disorder. Both the press and the public […]
What should we do about our national crisis of confidence? In every sense, confidence and trust in our institutions and national infrastructure is tanking. Let me count the ways. Tomorrow, I plan to go to London from Exeter. I have low confidence that when I get to the station my train will appear at all, […]
The figures are in. At this year’s Notting Hill Carnival, a total of 334 arrests were made by the Metropolitan Police. Up from the previous year’s 275 arrests, this included dozens for an assault on an emergency worker and possession of an offensive weapon. Along with the 50 police officers injured, there were eight stabbings, with […]
From the grotesque crimes of Wayne Couzens and Stephen Port, to the mishandling of sensitive moments such as partygate to the Sarah Everard vigil, to the frankly sickening evidence of what counts as workplace ‘banter’ among some officers, it’s fair to say events of the past few years have done severe damage to the public’s […]
Events in the US following the murder of George Floyd are an object lesson in what happens when policing is ripped out of communities. From Minnesota to Seattle via San Francisco, the progressive fetish of slashing police numbers in reprisal for bad law enforcement – both real and politically expedient – has been disastrous for […]
A man grips your neck and clamps down on your windpipe. You can’t breathe, you can’t escape, you’re about to pass out. Once you come to, there’s no mark on your neck so your attacker can strangle you again and again. It’s a particularly insidious form of assault that abusers use to control their victims. […]
Watch or listen to CapX’s weekly podcast ‘The Capitalist’ wherever you get your podcasts.
