imprisonment. In 1957, a murder committed during the course of or in the furtherance of theft carried the death penalty, and on 13th August 1964, Gwynne Owen Evans and Peter Anthony Allen, two Lancastrians in their early twenties, were hanged for murdering a van-driver during the course of theft. These were England’s last judicial hangings.
In 1968, the law of theft was completely overhauled. The definition of the crime was both altered and simplified, and from that time it has carried a maximum penalty of ten years’ imprisonment, with associated offences such as burglary and robbery carrying a maximum of life imprisonment in some cases. Those penalties still apply, for theft is still regarded by some as a sin, by others as a major crime and by yet more as a normal part of life.
People help themselves to ‘souvenirs’ from hotels, restaurants and cafes; they take stuff home from work and fiddle expense accounts. They ‘borrow’ with no intention of returning , lift plants from garden centres, purloin precious objects from stately homes and have expeditions to our cities for shop-lifting . And it is all theft with a ten-year maximum jail sentence.
In our modern society, the scope for theft is infinite; hundreds of thousands of such crimes are committed daily but massive numbers go unreported because they are accepted as ‘normal’, and so the true incidence of theft in this country cannever be known nor even estimated. But taken as a whole, and supported by most police officers, this will suggest that we live in a very dishonest society.
A statement of this kind, taken from knowledge but unsupported by statistics, will anger politicians who are to the left of centre, but such a claim will be agreed by most business and professional people. They know that thefts occur from their premises and many are dealt with internally, so why report those for which there is no chance of detection? A cafe-owning friend of mine cheerfully told me that he had about a hundred and twenty teaspoons and thirty-six ashtrays stolen every week, but he never reported any of these crimes to the police. The incidence of unreported theft would make a marvellous study for a university student …
But while the Church continues to denounce theft as a sin, and socialists continue to regard it as a symptom of a society deprived of its basic needs, police officers continue to regard it as a crime committed not by those in need, but by those who like to get their hands on something for nothing and don’t mind who suffers in the process. I must confess that I know few, if any, thieves who genuinely had to steal in order to survive; they stole out of pure greed. And that is why thieves are so despicable.
Although so many thefts are not notified to the police, considerable numbers are formally reported and investigated before being fed into the nation’s crime statistics. For the operational police officer, however, such academic matters are of little importance; his work involves knowing what constitutes a theft, and how to catch the villain responsible. Statistics are of little interest to him.
The 1916 definition of larceny was as follows, and this was the wording which we had to learn parrot-fashion. It was the equivalent of learning the Lord’s Prayer or the alphabet, and although I learned this more than thirty years ago I still remember it. Since then, of course, I had to learn the new definition of theft which is contained in the Theft Act 1968, but the old words stick in the memory. The 1916 wording may seem ponderous, but it does have a certain rhythm and indeed one poet wrote it down in verse form.
The definition is as follows, according to section 1 of theLarceny Act 1916, now repealed. ‘A person steals who, without the consent of the owner, fraudulently and without a claim of right made in good faith, takes and carries away anything capable of being stolen, with intent at the time of such taking permanently to deprive the owner
In 1968, the law of theft was completely overhauled. The definition of the crime was both altered and simplified, and from that time it has carried a maximum penalty of ten years’ imprisonment, with associated offences such as burglary and robbery carrying a maximum of life imprisonment in some cases. Those penalties still apply, for theft is still regarded by some as a sin, by others as a major crime and by yet more as a normal part of life.
People help themselves to ‘souvenirs’ from hotels, restaurants and cafes; they take stuff home from work and fiddle expense accounts. They ‘borrow’ with no intention of returning , lift plants from garden centres, purloin precious objects from stately homes and have expeditions to our cities for shop-lifting . And it is all theft with a ten-year maximum jail sentence.
In our modern society, the scope for theft is infinite; hundreds of thousands of such crimes are committed daily but massive numbers go unreported because they are accepted as ‘normal’, and so the true incidence of theft in this country cannever be known nor even estimated. But taken as a whole, and supported by most police officers, this will suggest that we live in a very dishonest society.
A statement of this kind, taken from knowledge but unsupported by statistics, will anger politicians who are to the left of centre, but such a claim will be agreed by most business and professional people. They know that thefts occur from their premises and many are dealt with internally, so why report those for which there is no chance of detection? A cafe-owning friend of mine cheerfully told me that he had about a hundred and twenty teaspoons and thirty-six ashtrays stolen every week, but he never reported any of these crimes to the police. The incidence of unreported theft would make a marvellous study for a university student …
But while the Church continues to denounce theft as a sin, and socialists continue to regard it as a symptom of a society deprived of its basic needs, police officers continue to regard it as a crime committed not by those in need, but by those who like to get their hands on something for nothing and don’t mind who suffers in the process. I must confess that I know few, if any, thieves who genuinely had to steal in order to survive; they stole out of pure greed. And that is why thieves are so despicable.
Although so many thefts are not notified to the police, considerable numbers are formally reported and investigated before being fed into the nation’s crime statistics. For the operational police officer, however, such academic matters are of little importance; his work involves knowing what constitutes a theft, and how to catch the villain responsible. Statistics are of little interest to him.
The 1916 definition of larceny was as follows, and this was the wording which we had to learn parrot-fashion. It was the equivalent of learning the Lord’s Prayer or the alphabet, and although I learned this more than thirty years ago I still remember it. Since then, of course, I had to learn the new definition of theft which is contained in the Theft Act 1968, but the old words stick in the memory. The 1916 wording may seem ponderous, but it does have a certain rhythm and indeed one poet wrote it down in verse form.
The definition is as follows, according to section 1 of theLarceny Act 1916, now repealed. ‘A person steals who, without the consent of the owner, fraudulently and without a claim of right made in good faith, takes and carries away anything capable of being stolen, with intent at the time of such taking permanently to deprive the owner
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