Criminals in Cars
By BRIAN INGLIS
WliEN, a few years ago, the crime figures for a town in the north of England rose by almost 50 per cent, in a single year, the Chief Constable had to explain that what seemed to be a sudden access of depravity was in fact only the result of a new system of reporting and recording incidents. Such crime statistics are con- sequently suspect—and in any case, there is not necessarily any close relationship between them and crime. That prosecutions for homosexual offences should have risen, and prosecutions for Sunday trading declined, may relate simply to enforcement. But some statistics provide evidence, Barbara Wootton believes,* which is too brutally consistent to be ignored: The typical criminal of today is certainly not the thief, nor the thug who hits an old lady on the head in order to possess himself of her hand- bag or to ransack her house: the typical criminal of today is the motorist. Of the grand total of 735.288 persons found guilty of criminal offences in England and Wales in 1955, no less than 354.506 were convicted in magistrates' courts of 'offences relating to motor vehicles' in addition to a small number found guilty at higher courts. Motorists thus constitute 48 per cent, of all those convicted of any criminal charge in any court.
It would be comforting to be able to believe that these figures, if correct, are misleading, be- cause the great bulk of the car crimes are trivial —parking offences or technical breaches of traffic regulations. But the figures for serious car crimes are also disturbing: In 1955, 3,331 convictions were recorded for the offence of motoring whilst drunk or drugged. . . . For reckless or dangerous (as dis- tinct from merely careless) driving, the number of convictions was 4,770; while the number of cases of motorists who were so indifferent to the havoc they had caused as to be guilty of failure to report, or to stop after, an accident numbered 6.360. These three categories together, therefore —the drunks, the reckless or dangerous, and those who disregarded accidents—account for a total of 14,441 convictions for what are surely very serious offences indeed.
This figure falls very little short of the total for 'breaking and entering'—colloquially, bur- glary—in the country. It is also a fair assump-
*SOCA SCIENCE AND SOCIAL PATHOLOGY. (Allen and Unwin, 35s.)
tion,. though Mrs. Wootton does not make it, that the number of people who commit serious car crimes and are not caught is vastly higher than the number of unconvicted burglars. And it is likely, though for obvious reasons not susceptible of proof, that society suffers far greater hurt, per- sonal and social, from serious car crimes than from theft. Jewels can be replaced : eyes cannot. Car crimes, in short, are one of the ugliest patho- logical symptoms society suffers from today.
Yet the culprits in serious car crimes are not regarded as 'criminals.' Even where they excite public obloquy—hit-and-run drivers, for example —they tend to get relatively light sentences. Magistrates who would send a woman to gaol for stealing a few shillings will often let off a driver on a manslaughter charge with a homily to the effect that the knowledge that he has killed will be punishment enough. The woman—it can of course be argued—wanted the money; the motorist did not want the corpse. But this is becoming harder to substantiate. A man, carry- ing a knife, walks to the local one evening. takes too many drinks, gets involved in a brawl, and kills somebody : how much more of a murderer is he than his richer neighbour who drives to the local, takes too many drinks, gets into his car, and kills somebody? The distinction is surely too slight to justify the discrepancy in the treatment of the offenders—particularly when for every one man convicted of crimes of violence no fewer than eight are convicted on serious driving charges— many of whom have, in fact, done violence to pedestrians, cyclists or other motorists. And the disproportion would be still higher if many of the dangerous drivers had not killed themselves in the process, rendering themselves ineligible for prosecution.
There is no obvious remedy. In theory, stiffer penalties could be imposed; but it is doubtful whether they would have the required deterrent effect. Deterrence is based on the assumption that crime is premeditated—that the criminal weighs up the advantages he may reap against the punish- ment he may expect if he is caught. But dan- gerous driving is not as a rule premeditated; motorists rarely plan to run over pedestrians. Be- sides, if heavier penalties were enacted the courts would simply cease to convict. Nous sommes tons les assassins, and we know it, Not many magis- trates have ever carried around knives for self- defence, so they can lightly impose heavy sentences on anybody who does; but most magis- trates are guilty every week of their lives of actions which, if they happened to involve them in an accident, could bring them to court on a manslaughter charge.
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The law, in other words, is unfitted to deal with this new brand of crime. And we are just begin- ning to realise that it is not very successful in dealing with traditional crime, either. The basis of the criminal law is that every adult individual is responsible for his actions unless he is (to quote the McNaghten Rules) 'labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing or, if he did know it, not to know he was doing wrong.' But Freud and his successors have shown that reason plays an insignificant part in the creation and sustaining of responsibility; and the Behaviourists, for different reasons, have reached the same conclusion. Responsibility is basically the product of early training and en- vironment; to blame somebody for not having it is often like blaming a man for his physical defects, arising from undernourishment in child- hood.
Yet the McNaghten Rules have survived— because, Mrs. Wootton plausibly suggests, they are relatively easy to interpret. The law is often more concerned with clarity than with justice. Still, it is obvious, even to lawyers, that they cannot last much longer. The difficulty is to find another set to put in their place; for, as Mrs. Wootton goes on to argue, the slope from McNaghten is slippery—there is no feasible legal resting place, short of the abandonment of the whole concept of responsibility. Except in a few borderline cases, it is relatively easy to divide sane from insane; there is no such division-be- tween responsible and not responsible. Gradu- ally, often with reluctance, researchers in this field are beginning to admit that there is no divi- sion between social abnormality and crime—that crime can only be treated as a disease.
This is a view which humanitarians have held for some time; what is significant is that Mrs. Wootton reaches it on (if the term is permissible) a-humanitarian grounds. She is trot here con- cerned—whatever her own feelings may be—with the fact that the law is unfair to criminals: that men are being wrongly punished for society's faults. Her well-documented objection to the law is that it fails to protect the law-abiding. This is partly because, as research is beginning to show, traditional penal methods can create rather than deter criminals (the punishments called for by the Cyril Osbornes and the Tory women Defarges, would probably stimulate crime); partly because they are valueless against the new crime —dangerous driving. The proposal that all criminals should henceforth be regarded as patients is not designed to make life easier for them, but to make life safer for society. They would not be cosseted; indeed, a certain well- knotvn sportsman, and another almost as well- known socialite, would find life much more disagreeable under the new dispensation, for they would not be allowed, as they are now, to add to a long string of serious driving offences with no more inconvenience to themselves than a few small fines and an occasional temporary suspen- sion of driving licence.
Partly, perhaps, because of this anxiety to show that she is not simply a humanitarian fuddy- duddy, partly to present her case as scientifically as possible, Mrs. Wootton is even inclined to snub potential allies, such as Dr. Bowlby, because their theories are notional or have inadequate statistical backing. This is understandable; but it is unfortunate when it leads her on to a section on 'contemporary attitudes in social work' which, apart from its doubtful relevance to her theme, is written with an undercurrent of rancour. Mrs. Wootton's dislike of the trend which has made some social workers arrogate to themselves the functions of doctor and priest has some justifica- tion; but in her hostility to their 'lamentable arro- game' she forgets that the trend, for all its excesses, was necessary. Every doctor knows that the symptoms patients bring him are not always those which the patients are really worried about —and even if they are, it may be important for him not simply to remove the symptoms, but to find how they originated. So it is with social workers. If they seek to look beyond the simple problems presented to them, it is often not 'intru- sion,' but ordinary common sense.
But this is a minor blemish on an important work. It is also a surprisingly readable work, considering the volume of evidence which Mrs. Wootton and her two helpers have had to examine and sift. Only occasionally is sociological jargon inadequately translated into comprehensible, if not always colloquial, English. And in view of the hysteria which the subject is tending to arouse, it could hardly be better timed.
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