Thou Shalt Not Editorialise

If there has been once travesty inflicted on the science of modern criminology, then that is surely the abolition of phrenology in the investigation of criminal cases. As the evil nuclear plant boss in The Simpsons, Montogomery Burns, retorts to his assistant's remark about phrenology having been proved a sham:

"Of course you'd say that...you have the brainpan of a stagecoach tilter!"

And The Times' editorial on Thursday appears to suggest that this sort of technique may indeed be the way forward. It does not do so, however, before circumlocutory broaching the issue of how to solve a crime problem that it denies even exists. I would attempt to lampoon it, were the original not already such an Orwellian nonsense:

When Gavin Gulia, Labour's spokesman on home affairs, declares a "crisis" in law and order one should perhaps counter that if such a crisis does exist it is one that has to do not with law and order alone, so much as with our society.

Naively, I had always imagined that the Maltese police were lazy verging on subnormal, but it transpires that there are simply no thieves for them to catch. This, however, does not stop The Times from suggesting how the police might go about identifying these inexistent ill-doers:

We do not know the age group of those who committed more than 11,000 thefts. We do not know their background. We do not know whether they are literate or numerate, whether they left school early, whether they are the sons and daughters of thieves. We do not know whether they come form broken homes or from single parent families. ... We do not know how many of these crimes were accompanied by violence.

Indeed, it is a shame that we don't whether those carrying out burglaries, say, are illiterate, as this would greatly simplify the task of apprehending them. That would require the embarrassing exercise of cataloguing and routinely rounding up Malta's illiterate population, but you know what they say about omelettes and breaking eggs. And, of course, discovering if a burglar is unable to read is quite a simple exercise. If they take the television but leave the collection of Everyman hardbound books, you've got yourself a manhunt. And if they if they were the son or daughter of a thief, it would be shocking that they weren't in prison already.
But The Times is not so frivolous as to decline the task of advising how to pull up crime from its roots. In an echo of Tony Blair famous electoral slogan, "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime", the editorial points the finger squarely at the parents, who the paper says must "take more responsibility for children in their care". Presumably, their own children, though it does not specify.
And what Times editorial would it be without some ecclesiastical input, which the leader writer expresses by urging the church "to play in its pastoral teaching on the fifth commandment". Now, maybe I'm being old-fashioned, but I'd have thought some more work on the sixth and eighth commandments should be given a slightly higher priority (for the heathens out there, You shall not murder and You shall not steal). What a shame then that the editorial ends of this thoroughly counterproductive note:

And bad parenting and bad schooling, as well as the drug business, must make a contribution to the thefts that are being carried out.

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On the day that The Times poo-pooed Gulia's "hysterical declaration" it carried no less than eight crime reports. Don't they teach reading in Maltese schools?

Man jailed over 'wild west-style shooting'
Drugs found hidden in decorative candles
Accused of petrol station hold-up
Teenager arraigned after joyride
Thefts charge
Jailed, fined for drug pushing
Buskers fined
Jailed for cocaine possession