Gunman Extraordinaire

✍ Scribed by Don Campbell

• Publisher: Elsevier
• Year: 1977
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 254 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0015-7368
• DOI: 10.1016/s0015-7368(77)71119-3

✦ Synopsis

This book describes in twelve chapters the state of crime in Britain today. Violence, smuggling, terrorism, theft, fraud and vice are illustrated by reference to well known case; and public debate. The authors are two journalists who know how to paint a picture with boldness of stroke and elaboration of detail and they do it well.

Britain suffers a loss through crime of over £500 million per year; school vandalism accounts for £10 million; seven out of ten crimes are never solved; senseless violence at one end of the spectrum and highly skilled crime at the other; the specialty of forensic pathology is doomed unless the Government step in to save it. These and many other p3tential headlines recur throughout the book. Yet there is little in the text to surprise or inform the forensic scientist. The chapter devoted to forensic science does not attempt to describe the administrative system but points to one or two items of current research and in outlining an actual example of' this progressive technology in action supplies one of the more optimistic chapters of the book.

There is extensive discussion of Sir Robert Mark's 1973 Dimbleby Lecture in which for example he referred to the existence of a small minority of lawyers who by doubtful methods "do very well from the proceeds of crime"-a challenge surely which the Law Society cannot afford to ignore.

The authors make some attempt to see where the blame for the present state of crime lies. The conclusion is that very msny contribute to the picture: weak judges, bent policeman, crooked lawyers, publicity-seeking politicians and of course mindless thugs.

And the authors might have added, a complacent public willing to tolerate and sometimes to condone the unprincipled exploitation of violence and greed, the public which we help to form.