If symptoms
persist.. .
WHY DO people turn to crime? It is difficult to meet so many criminals and not to ponder this vitally important ques- tion. Last week, as I was reading in the British Medical Journal that smokers have been granted legal aid so that they may sue the tobacco companies for all their ailments, I suddenly was in receipt of a blinding illumination into the cause of crime: smoking.
Only a third of the British population smokes, yet virtually 100 per cent of criminals do so. The next time I entered the prison, I checked that my insight was not the result of mere observational bias by asking a few officers for their estimate of the percentage of cons who smoked. All of them had difficulty recollecting any who didn't. And what is more, they all smoked before they ever came to prison.
Sceptics among my readers might object that, since both smokers and crim- inals are drawn predominantly from the lower classes, the association between smoking and crime is merely an effect of social class. To which I reply the follow- ing: i) The statistical association between smoking and crime is much stronger and more exact than that between social class and crime, ergo social class has nothing to do with it and ii) In any case, it is much more plausi- ble that indulgence in an expensive habit such as smoking should cause poverty than that poverty should cause an expen- sive habit such as smoking.
Of course, a scientific pioneer such as myself does not expect to be believed straight away: did they not mock Mes- mer and Gall (the founder of phrenolo- gy)? But let me assure any householder who has been burgled and is eligible for legal aid that I am prepared to appear on his behalf as an expert witness (legal aid fees £500 per day, plus travel and other reasonable expenses) if he sues the tobacco companies for having promoted burglary through smoking. I also have a friend who is willing to appear, two opin- ions being better than one.
Contrary to what the layman might expect, flashes of illumination such as mine are very tiring. As soon as it had been vouchsafed me, I felt I wanted to go to sleep. I understood at last what the mother of a patient of mine, a very stu- dious boy, meant when she told him it was bad for him to think so much because he might wear his brain out.
Another of my patients, rather less studious, asked me whether he could have something to make him relax.
`I don't want to think no more, doctor. I could do with a vacation from my mind.'
But to return to the question of legal aid. There is obviously no end to the suits which could justifiably be brought. For example, last week in the prison a newly remanded burglar came into my room clutching his arm, which had been rather badly bitten.
`I'm told I could sue the police for this,' he said, waving his arm in front of me like a trophy.
`Why?' I asked.
`It was a police dog what done it.'
`And what were you doing?'
`Running away.'
Theodore Dalrymple
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