A Fair Cop

At last, a definition of ‘being a criminal’

tristramhicks

April 17, 2020

A decade of funding cuts and now the need to police a public health emergency means an ever-increasing need to do more with less. In the mid-nineties the gap between resources and demand led to innovative solutions like computerisation and intelligence-led policing. We need to innovate again. One way to focus stretched resources would be to focus them on the people causing the most harm in society, the ‘real’ criminals. Unfortunately, despite seemingly endless discussion, we have never been able to settle on a working definition that the public understands and yet is operationally and legally robust. A definition which would allow us to really focus our resources on criminals and assess the results.

Strangely the UK did come up with a brilliant, legally robust definition, that fits what an ordinary member of the public would think of as ‘being a criminal’, but it was overlooked. It had been wrongly named and therefore misunderstood. It’s time to look again at Section 75 of the Proceeds of Crime Act and understand what it means to ‘be a criminal’.

One of the main hurdles to fighting crime in the UK is that we have not agreed who are the real criminals. One person’s criminal is another person’s climate warrior. A persistent parking nuisance might well be a criminal if they keep blocking your drive. Even dabbling your finger in some water may be a crime, it depends where you do it.

Policing a COVID19 lockdown

tristramhicks

2 comments

March 26, 2020

On 17^th March 2020 France went into lockdown. As a policing consultant, I was interested to experience how this worked. How do you train a population to protect itself? How do you police the fringes who need policing?

On the 16^th March, I was free to go where I wanted; on the 17^th of March I was still free, provided I carried a Certificate with me. The new requirement was well broadcast on the TV and radio, but I picked it up on the internet.

Deception

tristramhicks

no comments

March 20, 2020

Long before I joined the Metropolitan Police Fraud Squad I has fascinated by the concept of deception. How did apparently clever, even street-wise people get caught out by deceivers? Deception takes many forms, of course, this article is about the one-off deception, the sort that ruins lives, where the loss is the life savings, sometimes more, as I will explain. I want to start this tale at the end, the anguish of the victim.

The victim’s choice

My experience of hundreds of cases boils down to one common thread. At the point where the victim gets to choose, the choice made by the victim is irrelevant. This is because the deceiver has created an environment in which the victim believes they have to make a choice, they are so distracted by that choice that they fail to see the environment that the deceiver has created. In fact, whichever card they choose the Queen is no longer there at all. The choice feels wrong and risky but the victim is so ensnared that they focus, wrongly, on the detail, not the bigger picture. If you are reading this and it sounds all too familiar, including pressure to make a choice you are not happy with, get some third-party advice right now, don’t make the choice alone.

The rise of policing in England

tristramhicks

8 comments

December 8, 2019

The crime rate in England rose year on year for forty years from 1955 to 1995. Then it fell steadily for twenty years until 2015. Something happened, but what was it? This short paper is focuses on the acquisitive crime rate (theft, burglary, robbery, etc.). Acquisitive crime is on the rise again, will we learn from history?

A changing society had increased crime, plus the inability of traditional controls to work. Major factors included: increased dealing in illegal drugs; stealing to support addiction to new drugs; localised poverty and inequality; unemployment in traditional occupations; increasing availability of small, expensive, desirable, electronic items and the temptations of consumerism. Policing failed to keep pace with the changes and struggled with the ever-increasing crime wave.

Then, in a few short years, the steady increase in crime was stalled and then reversed by a perfect storm of policing in the late 1990s.

What does freezing mean?

tristramhicks

1 comment

December 8, 2019

This post explains the difference between confiscation, forfeiture, restraint, sequestration, seizing, freezing, civil recovery and asset recovery. This is to help you understand what is in the news, whichever country you are in.

Being frozen

These terms are all lawful ways to deprive people of the proceeds of crime in litigation against criminals or criminal assets. They are all English words with everyday meanings but also technical terms which are frequently used wrongly by journalists, lawmakers and commentators. Unfortunately they have also been wrongly used in English translations of foreign legislation and technical papers.

What the hell is money laundering anyway?

tristramhicks

no comments

December 6, 2019

It is a crime, the crime of handling the proceeds of other crimes. National criminal offence definitions must conform to the United Nations’ Conventions (UNCAC, UNTOC and Narcotics) which all have identical wording to describe money laundering. None of the definitions use the words “money” or “laundering”. Athough the criminal offence is new, the activity is as old as crime itself. The first money launderer was Eve, Adam’s wife, when she took the fruit from the forbidden tree.

Short history of confiscation in the UK

tristramhicks

no comments

December 6, 2019

Modern confiscation in the UK can be divided into three main phases lasting about 15 years each. From 1971 to 1986 (instrumentalities only), 1986 to 2002 (direct proceeds), 2003 to 2017 (direct, indirect and criminal lifestyle proceeds).