Regulating Crime: The Art of the Possible
| Author | David Kirk |
| DOI | 10.1350/jcla.2009.73.6.595 |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Opinion |
OPINION
Regulating Crime: The Art of the Possible
David Kirk*
Chief Criminal Counsel, Financial Services Authority
In August 2009 a report in the London free newspaper, Metro, claimed
that 10 million Britons were supporting child slavery. The thesis seemed
to be that by buying pirated DVDs and CDs, or smuggled cigarettes, or
using the services of a prostitute, or buying drugs, or by engaging in
dozens of other illicit activities, people are funding organised criminals
who in turn enslave children. The logic of the argument was extremely
dubious, and one suspected that even if the statistics relied on were
accurate, analysis of them was questionable. However, the report
painted a picture of a society of habitual lawbreakers, the vast majority
of whom are never prosecuted. Are there reasons, other than those
posited by the Metro, why this should be a matter for concern?
It sometimes seems that it is more difficult to avoid transgressions of
the law than to be an upright citizen. There are so many laws to break.
Citizens of the UK are regulated in every aspect of life. Browsing
through UK statutes online recently I stumbled across the Bees Act
1980, an Act which seeks to control pests and diseases affecting bees. It
is commendably short, at a mere five sections. In that short space it
creates two criminal offences, importing or moving bees in contra-
vention of an order made under the Act, and obstructing an authorised
person exercising a power of entry. It is curious, bearing in mind that the
1980 session was a very early stage of the new Conservative administra-
tion’s legislative programme, that any priority at all was accorded to this
issue, but I could not fail to note, digging deeper into the events of that
year, that there was also a Deer Act (creating offences to prevent the
poaching of deer), and an Import of Live Fish Act (creating offences to
control the import or release of fish into English and Welsh rivers),
rubbing shoulders with such big legislative beasts as the Education,
Health Services, Housing, and Industry Acts.
The creation of criminal offences to regulate personal behaviour (as
opposed to punishing the ‘biblical’ crimes of murder, theft and sexual
offences) is an ancient sport: Henry VIII, seeking to regulate the ob-
servance of the new religion, made it an act of treason (punishable, of
course, by death) to engage in Roman Catholic religious activity. More
recently, less extreme measures have been enacted to regulate the
description of properties in estate agents’ particulars (the Property Mis-
descriptions Act 1991) or anti-competitive behaviour (the Enterprise
Act 2002). The Second World War spawned swathes of petty regulation
* The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the Financial Services Authority or the Journal of Criminal Law.
451The Journal of Criminal Law (2009) 73 JCL 451–453
doi:10.1350/jcla.2009.73.6.595
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