''A Brief History of Crime'' is the third book by author and journalist

Peter Hitchens Peter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951) is an English author, broadcaster, journalist, and commentator. He writes for ''The Mail on Sunday'' and was a foreign correspondent reporting from both Moscow and Washington, D.C. Peter Hitchens h ...

. Originally published in 2003, it was reissued in 2004 under the new title ''The Abolition of Liberty''. The book was described in 2012 by ''

The American Conservative ''The American Conservative'' (''TAC'') is a magazine published by the American Ideas Institute which was founded in 2002. Originally published twice a month, it was reduced to monthly publication in August 2009, and since February 2013, it has ...

'' magazine as "a must-read for anyone on either side of the Atlantic".

Themes

The book challenges a number of commonly held views about the causes of crime, criticising the opinion that crime is caused by poverty or other forms of social deprivation. It also charts the changes in policing from the 1960s to the present day, and examines and criticises the workings of the modern British prison system, including a chapter on the author's visit to

Wormwood Scrubs Wormwood Scrubs, known locally as The Scrubs (or simply Scrubs), is an open space in Old Oak Common located in the north-eastern corner of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London. It is the largest open space in the borough, ...

. Hitchens contends that the former principle of "due punishment of responsible persons" has been abandoned in favour of vague modern theories of rehabilitation.

Reception

Left-leaning publications were very critical of the book. David Rose in ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'' described the book as "a churning, ceaseless rant, akin to the wake of a cross-Channel ferry. It has similar bilious effects" and questioned whether the desperate situation described by Hitchens really exists, citing Oxford as an example. Conservative newspapers assessed the book more favourably.

Bryan Appleyard Bryan Appleyard (born 24 August 1951, Manchester) is a British journalist and author. Life and work Appleyard was educated at Bolton School and King's College, Cambridge. He worked at ''The Times'' and as a freelance journalist and has written ...

, writing in ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'', described it as "a marvellous, angry polemic" that accounts for and charts how the British Police force became so "institutionally bureaucratic, sullen, chippy and ineffectual". In ''

The Sunday Telegraph ''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961 and published by the Telegraph Media Group, a division of Press Holdings. It is the sister paper of ''The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', kn ...

'',

Theodore Dalrymple Anthony Malcolm Daniels (born 11 October 1949), also known by the pen name Theodore Dalrymple (), is a conservative English cultural critic, prison physician and psychiatrist. He worked in a number of Sub-Saharan African countries as well as in ...

agreed with the main arguments in the book, writing "Mr Hitchens places the blame firmly where it belongs: on a supine and pusillanimous political establishment that, for four decades at least, has constantly retreated before the verbal onslaught of liberal intellectuals whose weapons have been mockery allied to sentimental guilt about their prosperous and comfortable lives, and whose aim has been to liberate themselves from personally irksome moral constraints, without regard to the consequences for those less favourably placed in society".

Publishing history

The book was published by Atlantic Books, () in 2003. An updated edition, re-titled ''The Abolition of Liberty: The Decline of Order and Justice in England'' () and featuring a new chapter on

identity cards An identity document (also called ID or colloquially as papers) is any document that may be used to prove a person's identity. If issued in a small, standard credit card size form, it is usually called an identity card (IC, ID card, citizen ca ...

("Your papers, please"), and with two chapters – on gun control ("Out of the barrel of a gun") and capital punishment ("Cruel and unusual") – removed, appeared in April 2004. Hitchens said in his weblog in 2010 that the reason for removing the above chapters was so that the book "would be read more widely". The deleted chapters are restored in the audiobook.

Bibliography

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brief History of Crime 2003 non-fiction books Books about politics of the United Kingdom Books by Peter Hitchens Non-fiction crime books Atlantic Books books