This book is self-described as ‘a whirlwind demolition’ of conventional thinking about the causes of crime and how it is best tackled. Many of its pages are dedicated to offering a corrective to widely held assumptions as Nick Ross shows how many are false or worse. Ross claims that it is not badness that makes the offender, but opportunity. Tackling crime is about changing incentives and not about making ‘bad’ people moral. Rather than focusing on improving the ethical sensitivities of potential offenders, Ross argues we must reduce opportunities for committing crimes. He points to the use of wheel locks in cars to drive down auto theft and the advent of home alarm systems to tackle burglaries as examples of how reducing opportunities for offending reduce crime. Other examples include cases of violent crimes. Ross notes there was a ‘huge decline’ in criminal websites, including online child pornography, after the introduction of active site-blocking measures as these reduced opportunities to access them.
None of this is news. Writing nearly 2,500 years ago, Plato argued that people can become tempted to make the wrong choices where such options are available. More recently, increased surveillance and improved security have become more widespread as effective countermeasures to criminal activity in reducing options, but also targeting incentives: CCTV cameras can provide a useful deterrent by increasing likelihood of crime detection.
But does Crime live up to its billing? There are useful chapters on statistics charting their use and abuse as well as a second brief chapter exposing fallacies, such as that a life of crime is one of luxury and great wealth. Ross rehearses criticisms that have been made previously by others about the problems facing the criminal justice system more broadly concerning reducing addictions, reoffending post-imprisonment and how crimes are recorded. But it is hardly a demolition as so much, if not all, has been said before.
Crime has a second objective: its aim is not simply to dispel existing myths, but to convince us about new policies. These simply concern reducing opportunities – or, to put it bluntly, tinkering within the system. I was surprised to find no genuinely revolutionary ideas throughout. One omission is the lack of nudges: if reducing opportunity is so key, then changing the incentive structure (or ‘choice architecture’ in nudge-speak) would seem key but alas nothing. A second omission is the increasing use of restorative justice as a welcome alternative to the traditional and less flexible courtroom. Its use has been found to improve victim satisfaction with the process and reduce reoffending at much-reduced costs by focusing on addressing relevant factors through the flexible application of effective options. Precisely the kind of evidence-based opportunity-changing work that Ross seems to favour. While Crime does well at reminding us of what we know, it is less convincing about how this can be expanded.
———————————
Thom Brooks is professor of law and government at Durham University
———————————
Crime: How to Solve It – and Why So Much of What We’re Told is Wrong
Nick Ross
BiteBack Publishing | 384pp | £17.99