I thoroughly recommend buying and reading the “Big Issue“. It carries a very attractive and eclectic range of articles. One of its features is “My Pitch”, where the story of a Big Issue seller is related. I find myself reading this feature first – it is always fascinating and heart-warming.
I’m now going to raise a topic which was mentioned in “Big Issue” this week in a curious way. Their “Focus” piece was a Q&A with Neil Dudgeon (any relation to Guy Dudgeon who produced “Space Oddity”?-ed).
Who is Neil Dudgeon? – I hear you cry.
He is Inspector Barnaby in Midsomer Murders. He seems to be quite thoughtful. The Q&A leads on to the lead piping in the Cluedo set and Neil Dudgeon says:
On the subject of lead, I gather that since lead was taken out of petrol about 30 years ago there has been a 50 per cent decline in the amount of violent crime in the country. I don’t think it’s clear exactly what the relationship is but it seems a big coincidence. There are people who know more about this than me. I’m only a pretend TV detective.
This 2014 BBC article by Dominic Casciani is a good starting point on this topic:
Lead theorists say that data they’ve collated and calculated from each nation shows the same 20-year trend – the sooner lead is removed from the environment, the sooner crime will begin to fall.
Dr Bernard Gesch says the data now suggests that lead could account for as much as 90% of the changing crime rate during the 20th Century across all of the world.
“A lot of people would say that correlation isn’t cause,” he says. “But it seems that the more the exposure, the more extreme the behaviour. I’m certainly not saying that lead is the only explanation why crime is falling – but it is certainly the most persuasive. Unless someone is telling us that the brain is not involved in decision-making then lead has to be relevant to crime.”
So why isn’t this theory universally accepted?
Well, it remains a theory because nobody could ever deliberately poison thousands of children to see whether they became criminals later in life.
Lead theorists say that doesn’t matter because the big problem is mainstream criminologists and policymakers who can’t think outside the box.
But Roger Matthews, professor of criminology at the University of Kent, rejects that. He says biological criminologists completely miss the point.
“I don’t see the link,” he says. “If this causes some sort of effect, why should those effects be criminal?
Short of force-feeding lead to a cohort of children to see if they turn out more criminal than unleaded children, it seems unlikely this argument will be settled.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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8 Comments
I don’t think many of us will have any problem identifying Neil Dudgeon, unless we are so nerdy and one-dimensional that we only spend time going from one Council byelection to the next!
The lead/crime link is a very interesting proposition. Although there is as yet no known mechanism it could be operating by, the correlation is striking. More than that, the cost of the crime peak was so astronomical that every possible cause should be properly investigated, as cracking the cause could save hundreds of £billions in the future.
Obesity has risen over these years as well. Maybe people are too fat to commit violent crime.
Dr Gesch has given us all a new fun game. Who can think of the funniest correlation?
Fascinating on the same day as Eugenics, a sort of similar but reverse notion, society gets rid of something and benefits are surprising !
Though of course, to be welcomed that the something is lead in petrol and not , as the old slang used to describe it , the lead in a mans pencil !
If it has, then it is Des Wilson we should thank.
Paul Walter: “Short of force-feeding lead to a cohort of children to see if they turn out more criminal than unleaded children, it seems unlikely this argument will be settled.”
This argument may be contradicted by the fact that leaded kids, mostly, have run the world. They are not daft.
As far as the UK is concerned, shouldn’t the figures have fallen a lot earlier? Leads water piping was phased out in the 50s and banned in 69 (I think). Plus, of course, lead paint was also phased out around then as well.
I think the article raises an interesting point, but we should remember that the reason for getting lead out of petrol was good evidence that it actually damaged the brains of chidren who lived near busy roads. This was sufficient reason for embarking on the reform in the first place.
Lead water pipes are another issue. The risk of the lead coming from the pipes into the water is largely in soft-water areas; in hard-water areas, the build-up of fur on the inside of the pipe stops direct contact between the lead and the flowing water.
There are lots of lead water pipes still in use throughout the UK, and there has never been a large-scale campaign to get rid of them.