Second opinion
THE absence of a dynamic economy is a terrible thing. It means that, round here at least, evil is the root of all money.
I am not referring only or even mainly to pimps and drug-dealers. Far from it; I mean the professional classes. The worse the populace behaves, the more money they make.
This inspiring thought occurred to me in the prison last week. I happened to see there a colleague of mine. He is usually quite cheerful, but on this occasion looked a little crestfallen, Naturally, I asked him what the matter was.
'Lee's just been sentenced to life imprisonment,' he said.
I couldn't really see what was so terrible about that. The Lee in question had made it perfectly clear by his conduct that he had no intention of giving up his career of robbery and burglary. That he had at last received a sentence commensurate with his activities seemed to me — as a member of the general public — a cause for rejoicing rather than for lamentation. I confided my thoughts to my colleague.
'But don't you see?' he said. 'Lee gets caught about three or four times a year, Each time the court requests a medical report on him from me. Now they won't need one for a long time.' I heard of a similar tragedy when I attended court later in the week. Another nice little earner — for the doctors, that is — had been sentenced to life imprisonment. His activities had almost singlehandedly paid the school fees of another of my colleagues, who was far more devastated by the sentence than the recipient of it had been. The fact is that crime pays — for the professional classes called upon to deal with criminals.
This time I was in court only briefly. I happened to be present when the previous case was called.
'Are you William Jones?' the clerk of the court asked the man in the dock who, suffice it to say, had not dressed up for the occasion.
'No,' he said.
`Oh,' said the clerk of the court, a little flustered. 'I thought you were. Who are you, then?'
This was surely to get things the wrong way round: it should be sentence first, name afterwards. Whoever he was, he certainly looked guilty enough. 'I've tried to explain to you before,' said the defendant testily. `I'm Bill Jones, not William.'
The judge looked sternly at him. He had infringed the court's monopoly on pedantry. However, no rebuke was forthcoming. The question the court had to decide was whether it was permissible for the chief prosecution witness to be crossexamined behind a screen on account of the defendant's violence.
The case having been adjourned, the jury for the case in which I was appearing was sworn in. If these were my peers, I'd rather be tried by being thrown in a pond to see whether I floated or sank; the chances of a true verdict would be considerably greater. What a collection! I begin to see why Mr Blunkett wants to abolish jury trials: the British aren't up to them. Needless to say, they all wore trainers, even though ordinary decent shoes are no more expensive than trainers. And they were dressed in shiny nylon tracksuits of many colours. It gave you migraine just to look at them.
As the Iron Duke would have said, I don't know what they do to the criminals, but, by God, they frighten me!
Theodore Dalrymple
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