Representation of Crime: Part 1

I talked in a previous post about the difficulty many police and others involved with the criminal justice system have in relating their thoughts, expectations and feelings to those outside of it. It certainly is difficult, but by no means impossible. What I would like to talk about in this, and hopefully following posts, is about the representation in literature, TV and film of the police, the criminal justice system, and environment they work in.

Firstly I thought I’d like to talk a little bit about TV – crime and police dramas are huge entertainment. Crime drama, law drama, police procedural, posh country murders – there must be a dozen of these shows on TV in any one day. Of course, the quality varies hugely. Most British dramas with the odd exception (The Long Firm, Low Winter Sun) are, well, a bit light. At best we can say we have cornered the nostalgia market in posh country murders. Our police procedural dramas are little short of a well-known joke. Our shows often neither entertain nor come across as authentic.

It’s really the US that we look to for the best dramas on TV, best for entertainment, best for authenticity.If you want pop-corn for the eyes you don’t need to look further than the CSI franchise. It’s fast moving, flashy, exciting. I live for the droll pre-credit line; something along the lines of “the witness can’t talk, but unfortunately for them, the evidence can”. I could kiss the person who comes up with these.

The issue of authenticity is a tricky one because you don’t obtain it by direct replication - it's not as simple as that. No-one wants to watch an actual investigation - as per my previous post, most of it is boring. What you can do though is get the settings right, the characters right, their motivations right, and most of all, get the feelings right. When American dramas get it right as in Homicide: Life on the Streets and The Wire, you feel as if you are there, right there with them – there is no disbelief to suspend. It is hugely ambitious, aiming as high as it can artistically. The settings look real, the actors look and behave like the people who live there – the characters are often unlikeable and unsympathetic, you know, kind of like real people. Moral dilemmas are aired, ambiguity embraced. The Wire has been compared almost to a sociology lesson - a peon to a dying former working-class city. This is TV at its best - period - let alone the best crime drama on TV. But I'll come back in future posts to talk about The Wire, which more or less deserves it's own posting.

Homicide often achieves something similar with its interrogation scenes - you feel not just the realism of the crimes committed, the reaction of the criminal and the cops, but you also get to the root of the matter. Real interviews are considerably more boring, but in Homicide when Frank Pembleton rages at the suspect with raw angst - it is our angst, our disbelief, our anger at the injustice that people do this to each other, and often for the stupidest, most mundane reasons. It's almost got the raw intensity of theatre to it

This is why I think most British crime drama is a complete waste of time. We take most of our inspiration from Agatha Christie and produce tricky murder mysteries, though oddly enough, we often manage to distil out Christie’s acutely observant eye. It’s something to watch with family on a Sunday evening with the family, shortly after a re-run of Lovejoy. If The Wire is a challenging piece of art then British posh country murders are the intellectual equivalent of a sudoku puzzle – not wholly without merit, but a very momentary pleasure at best.

I'll come back to talk about this issue in further posts.

Wendy finally goes

So the inevitable has finally happened.

Even if she had somehow been cleared by the committee, she was a dead duck leader. Not once in her entire time as the leader of Scottish Labour has she shown much signs of even bare competence, let alone the sort of leadership you would expect. It was true that there were unrealistic expectations on her from the off, but there was not even the bare flicker of optimism that it would get any better.

Her resignation speech is a perfect example of how small-time this leader really was. Full of self-pity and aspiring to little more of an excuse than "it wisnae me, miss", she again demonstrates her perfect inability to get any political capital out of any given situation. A bit of grace in defeat often goes a long way to soften people's hearts - after all, there but for the grace of God go I - but to then turn round and claim that her predicament was somehow entirely the fault of the SNP pursuing her does tend to conveniently ignore that fact that she broke the law, plain and simple. The SNP were just playing politics - Labour would have done the same in their position, no question. However unpleasant it may have been for Wendy, it's the nature of the game she is in. And yes, as crimes go, it was hardly a biggie. But if you were caught for a minor infraction in day to day life and have to appear before the local Magistrates it always makes sense to be open, honest and unreservedly apologetic. Standing in the dock whinging about being caught just earns you everyone's contempt. And contempt is a hard thing to bounce back from.

But there's a much larger issue at play than Wendy's problems - what to do with Scottish Labour. They haven't enjoyed a decent leader since Donald Dewar. McLeish was a short-lived joke. McConnell's activity in office made glaciation look positively pro-active. Wendy's performance was part Greek tragedy, part The Office - dismally mundane failure. But it's not just the leadership. Scottish Labour's time in opposition has seen them grow a ferocious appetite for cannibalism. They do seem a lot more concerned in fighting themselves than the SNP. To become leader of Scottish Labour must now be a little like taking charge of Newcastle Utd - unrealistic expectations, no support from the people below you, a poor selection of players, and no ideas.

The mindless boredom of criminal investigations.

Zodiak, 2007, David Fincher

Hey, did you remember that part in the film where the SFPD were tying to obtain some evidence from a Sheriff's office in another jurisdiction, and it went back and forward between the police, the Sherriff's office, the attorneys, and so on and so on - you remember, the point in the film your eyelids started to close, and you began to wonder exactly which one of your friends suggested that you all see this film, and quite how this could be the same director who did Fight Club and Seven? And then the film ended with no-one being caught, and you still not knowing who did the murders? Yep - that's virtually every single criminal investigation ever, right there. Zodiac has been referred to as the most accurate representation of a police procedure on film, and not without reason. Investigations are BORING.

I'm a criminal investigator with a govt dept and have been for 6 1/2 years, so I am well versed in the frustration of investigating and prosecuting a case. To say it is challenging puts it mildly. Breaks in cases often happen suddenly - you spend the next two days chasing a lead. And then sometimes you go weeks without anything. You have to learn a huge amount of patience, and come to expect frustration and disappointment. Sometimes you just can't get the quality of evidence you need. Sometimes the suspects give you a hard time. Often, the witnesses you reply on to give you your primary evidence don't want to do it. Oh sure, there's the odd occasion that something genuinely exciting happens (interviewing suspects, surveillance). But do something exciting, and expect to be writing it up for hours afterwards, and then face the possibility of being questioned about it in court by a defense barrister. In this job, being too dedicated can sometimes come back and bite you in the bum. Thinking of a new way to deal with something is usually just finding a new way of getting into trouble. You are better to be cautious and patient, and work with what you have. And learn to start swearing creatively;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQbsnSVM1zM&feature=related

Show Zodiak to new police recruits before they sign the bottom of their application forms and we'd lose the entire force within a year or two - most people join the police for the action.


Hot Fuzz, 2007, Edgar Wright

If you look at police advertising campaigns like Could You? (http://www.policecouldyou.co.uk/index.php), it stresses the importance of making the right judgments at the right time - snap decisions that can make a difference. What it doesn't explain is the hours of paperwork, mindless procedures, having to see some of your cases fail either in or on their way to court, and ultimately, how you accommodate the criminals you deal with into your view of the world. Have a look for example at this well-known website;

http://www.coppersblog.blogspot.com/

Most of it is just the dull opinions of PC's whinging about 'bloody paperwork'. It's because it's not what they signed up for. But look closer, and you will see some worryingly reactionary articles.

I understand where they come from. Most people who join the police come from well-adjusted law-abiding backgrounds. For the first few years in my job, encountering endemic social problems and some entirely unsympathetic people committing crimes - and who sometimes get away with it - was a real shock to the system. A lot of it was naivety on my part - I grew up in a very nice middle-class town in the Scottish countryside. But there was certainly more to it - how to come to terms with seeing justice fail, and to see the work that I do make little or no difference whatsoever to huge social problems. And to compound the matter further, often the only people who understand the world you live in are other police or investigators. This daily brush with harsh reality turns most onto just another become PC Plodd, because it's the easiest option available - do as little as possible, and despise most of the people you deal with.

As for me well, I'm still liberal sort of chap. And I still like the job. There's a part of me which still wants to go out doing the crime fighting, but when I come up against a procedural wall or evidencial desert, I have to switch it off, and just not feel guilty. Mark Rufallo's character in Zodiac is in many ways the personification of every effective investigator or officer I have met. He takes a case as far as he is allowed to, and then goes home and switches off. The other alternative is vigilantism, which of course makes for great films. Though Zodiak does allow Mark Rufallo's cop the dignity of walking out of Dirty Harry in disgust.

Greetings

Thankyou for visiting! So what is this blog about? Well, it's basically just a collection of ideas and opinions on various topics I have an interest in. I like to write a little bit about politics, history, music, books, what ever takes my fancy.

I've been swithering a while over writing a blog or not. There is some excellent writing out there on the blogs I regularly visit, and I sincerely doubt that I can come up with anything quite as witty, interesting or informative on these just for example;

http://flyingrodent.blogspot.com/
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/ (http://www.markvernon.com/friendshiponline/dotclear/
(http://gracchii.blogspot.com/) (http://www.exile.ru/articles/list.php?IBLOCK_ID=35&SECTION_ID=156).

For a while, the quality of writing I came across intimidated me away from even trying. I eventually came to the conclusion that I shouldn't really worry. If I write a load of crap, people will either tell me or stop visiting. Nothing lost, nothing gained. And if they don't like me, screw em' (latter insight aided by a few beers).

Anyway, a little about myself. I'm a criminal investigator with a govt dept, have been for 6 1/2 years. I'm Scottish, but have lived in the North of England for over 10 years now. I'm very happy down south in The North.

Politically I've always been somewhere on the left. I always remember my grandfather telling me the reason he voted Labour after coming home from the war. "It was simple - I could vote for the haves of the have-nots". This principle remained with me when I went to Salford Uni in 1997 to study history and politics. There as students we talked in pubs and clubs about social-democracy and how to roll back the tide of Thatcherite reforms from 1979. People still talked about marxism. I remember I had voted barely weeks before starting uni in Scotland for devolution; many of us were worried that it wouldn't happen, that the people of Scotland just would grasp the nettle (or thistle, more appropriately). Ask us politics students in 1997 what the struggles of the next decade would be, and just about the last thing anyone would have thought of would be the War on Terror and the erosion of our civil liberties. When we thought of terrorism in 1997, it was the IRA that came to mind.

How times have changed. The main items for discussion on the left today have moved away from this. Today on the left we are more concerned with an increasingly authoritarian govt, the divisive legacy of our involvement in Iraq, the struggle with anti-Americanism, some surprusing vitriol towards religion, the occasion public confessions of former lefties 'mugged by reality'. It's all rather strange. The differences between socialists, socialist-democrats, marxists, liberals and everyone else left of centre seems little more than academic quibbling today. It's just not on the radar of public discussion.

And yet my memory probably fails me. There was to be no rolling back of Thatcherite reforms in 1997, it was simply never on the cards. The 9/11 attack was probably an very unfortunate fluke, but the Middle East was still a powder keg, just waiting for someone to strike the match. Divisions and sub-divisions of lefty groups were probably doomed to irrelevance once the Soviet Union disintegrated as British conservative and American republican leadership claimed victory - an event long before 1997. It's so tempting to say 'I was there' about certain events, whilst probably missing the fact the the real turning point was many years earlier, when you hadn't been looking, or probably born.

Though I have an interest in politics, in my heart of hearts, history is my true passion. I'll be writing quite a bit about this over time. I'll finish this post by quoting one of my favorite historians, Marc Bloch. He was a leading French historian between the wars, and took up arms as a resistance fighter in WW2. He was shot by the Nazis in 1944. Anyway - this quote is what this blog is aspiring to.

"The nature of our intelligence is such that it is stimulated far less by the will to know than by the will to understand."