Report to the People
Crime Pays?
"Crime," says the hero at the end of every 1950’s detective movie, "doesn’t pay."
Of course, anyone who’s seen the size of your average gangster’s house knows that this is nonsense. Crime certainly does pay. It pays for flash cars, lavish jewellery, wide-screen televisions and all the other trappings of a luxury lifestyle.
But, to be honest, it’s not as if criminals really need to bother hiding their wealth. The chances of them being separated from it are slim.
Under the current law, the value of assets confiscated from criminals in Scotland is less than £1 million a year. Washers when compared to the vast sums they make off the backs of their victims.
But not for much longer.
The Proceeds of Crime Act – which will give the police and the courts much tougher powers to seize criminal profits – has now received Royal Assent.
The new laws make it easier to strip villains of their ill-gotten gains and put the cash back into the communities from which it was taken. At the moment, for example, courts can only restrain a suspect’s assets when he is about to be charged. As this gives him plenty of time to make them miraculously vanish, the courts will now be able to restrain his assets as soon as a criminal investigation begins.
And it won’t just be briefcases full of fivers they seize. Where the court finds that a convicted person has a criminal lifestyle, it will assume that all his assets are paid for by dirty money and take the lot.
The Act, though, goes beyond just getting more from those who wind up in the dock.
Too many serious criminals organise the criminal activity of others, happily profit from the results, but remain remote enough from the actual crime to make it hard for charges to stick.
The Act seeks to put an end to this by bringing in a new power of "civil recovery." This means that courts can seize a criminal’s assets – even without him first being convicted. This will be backed up by giving police and customs officers new powers to search for and seize assets suspected of being the proceeds of crime. The "Mr Big" behind a job, therefore, is now as likely lose his house, car and bank balance as the thugs he paid to carry it out.
The bottom line is that, if crime doesn’t pay, people will be less tempted and hence less likely to become criminals. "Tough on crime. Tough on the causes of crime," as I think someone once said.
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