Politics
Even more foul than murder
Published 10 April 2000
Most of us can imagine being driven to kill. So why do we call it the ultimate crime, while far greater evils go unpunished?
Murder is not the worst crime, nor are murderers the worst criminals.
By this I mean the average murder and the average murderer, so to speak. Some murders are so savage, so brutal or so premeditated that their perpetrators seem almost to belong to a different category of human being, but the majority of murderers do not. In fact, murder is one of the crimes - in this respect like shoplifting - that many fundamentally decent people can envisage themselves being driven to commit. A moment's passion or loss of control, such as most people have experienced at some time in their lives, would be sufficient: after all, the malice that is required to commit a murder need only exist, legally speaking, for a fraction of a second before the deed is done, or even be virtually coterminous with it.
I am not saying that the average murderer is a good chap, let alone an unsung or misunderstood hero, though I have certainly known murderers with whom I would more happily pass an evening than with many righteous men of my acquaintance. Most murders, at least as they are committed in this country, are deeply sordid, redolent of the odour of exhaled alcohol and spilt blood (a combination of smells familiar to any doctor who has worked in casualty). Artistic murder, as encountered in fiction, is rare: the man who dramatically raises the insurance premiums on the life of his intended victim can rarely contain himself for more than two weeks before actually committing the murder, thereby giving the slowest of detectives a clue to the solution of the crime.
Murder is sometimes the outcome of a stupid and confused drunken brawl whose trigger is lost in the mists of inebriation (though contrary to what many criminals suppose, amnesia for the events is not a mitigating circumstance, let alone a complete defence). Quite often, murder is the culmination or logical outcome of a life of petty but escalating crime; more often still, it is the final scene of a domestic drama of great passion but little coherence.
Most murderers do not give the impression of cold-bloodedness, and few have struck me as inherently evil rather than foolish, stupid, impulsive, weak or pathetic. If a person's habitual intentions and dispositions are relevant in the assessment of the moral seriousness of a crime, there is a world of difference between a man whose victim falls to the ground during a drunken brawl, hits his head and dies in hospital a week later from head injuries, and a man who meticulously plans to kill and carries out his plan. An example of the latter would be the man who committed a lesser offence in order to get sent to the prison where the man whom he wished to kill was held prisoner, and there, in the exercise yard, slashed his throat with a blade he had carefully manufactured and secreted about him for the purpose. Incidentally, he threatened to cut my throat, too, unless I prescribed him the pills he wanted: adding helpfully that, since he knew he would never be released from prison, he had little to lose by doing so - in my view an accurate assessment of his situation.
But the great majority of murderers are not like this. In sheer malignity and deliberation, they are usually far from the worst of wrongdoers. I will pass over the torture chambers run by drug dealers in my city (often situated in gymnasia) to which they abduct debtors to extract promises of payment by using the methods of the Spanish Inquisition. Even so, the average citizen in a modern democracy has more to fear, as far as being subjected to torture is concerned, from his fellow citizens than he has from the state.
An Englishman's home is his torture chamber, especially if he is young, male and unattached though given to sexual jealousy. There, at home, he may practise the arts of torture to his heart's content, for many years on end, quite uninterrupted by the law, and if by any chance the object of his violent attentions should leave him, as eventually she is inclined to do, why - he can always find another. For of willing victims there is no end.
Perhaps I should illustrate what I mean by an example of the kind of case I hear about four, five or six times a week (and have heard about for the past ten years, making thousands of cases in total): not in the prison, but in the hospital in which I work.
A man takes his loved one and throws her to the floor. He cuffs her wrists together behind her back and then cuffs her ankles together. Then he joins up the two pairs of cuffs by a loop of nylon rope and shortens the distance between them by pulling on both ends of the rope and securing them in a knot. Then he takes a handkerchief and gags her. Like Mr Usher of The Fall of the House of Usher, he is hypersensitive to sound, especially that of female protest.
He takes another piece of nylon rope, passes it round her neck and starts a little light strangulation, releasing his hold when the choking grows convulsive or the face too livid or blue. Then, throwing down the rope, he kicks her on the body and in the head. Finally, he releases her and drives her to work. He needs his lover's earnings as well.
Needless to say, this manner of proceeding is not, as the murderers usually put it in describing their own crimes, a one-off. A rush of blood to the head can hardly explain either the presence of handcuffs in the house or the repetitive nature of the conduct: though, strangely enough, the victim is inclined to attribute the latter to a special kind of undiagnosed epilepsy, believing that he could not control himself even if he would.
This kind of behaviour is not that of a man so bizarre that he can be dismissed as a psychopathological oddity or rarity: I hear about similar conduct practically every day of my working life, and there are reasons for supposing that its prevalence has increased in the past couple of decades. For example, quite a few of the nurses in my hospital have told me that they have experienced something similar. Indeed, it is now so widespread that the victims themselves consider it completely normal and express no hope of escaping, even by finding somebody else. He, if past experience is anything to go by, will turn out to be exactly the same. Such women consider there are two possible stations in life: the frying pan and the fire.
Why do men behave in this fashion? First, there is the negative reason: the extreme unlikelihood that they will ever be called to account, either by the law or by social stigmatisation - it being generally held that we mustn't pass judgements on other people's lifestyles. Second, there are positive reasons: the sheer, unalloyed pleasure for its own sake of the exercise of malignity and evil.
Torture is what bureaucrats would call the "policy" or the "strategy" of these men. For there is nothing quite like arbitrary torture for ensuring the loyalty (at least for a time) of the person with whom you live.
The arbitrary and unpredictable nature of the torture - that is to say, unpredictable as to when it will be inflicted, though entirely predictable that it will be inflicted - is an important component of the policy, for domestic torturers almost always have a deep, implicit grasp of psychology. The torture must be such that the victim can discern no consistent pattern to its infliction, and no precipitating causes. There must be nothing she can do or refrain from doing to avoid it, because then he might have no "reason" to inflict it. From his point of view, he must be free to indulge in torture whenever he feels so inclined.
But if there is no pattern to it, she is not prevented from seeking one. Indeed, the search for the missing pattern, for the golden key that will unlock his true, beneficent character and allow her to live in peace, becomes the obsession of her life. Indeed, she can think of nothing else: he fills her mind to the exclusion of all else, which is precisely what he wants. He may count for nothing in the big, wide world, but at least he is the Stalin of his own home. His resort to torture confers great importance upon him; indeed, all-importance as far as his victim is concerned. It boosts his self-esteem: it is really most gratifying.
When finally his victim escapes him, he is devastated for a time, like an animal cheated of its prey, but he soon enough recovers and finds another. For example, a man known to me, with a long history of extreme violence, has tortured an unending succession of women and takes his present victim's forearms from time to time and "snaps" them (I use the victim's own terminology). That is to say, he deliberately breaks them as if they were mere kindling; he also uses a hammer on her fingers and his feet on her ribs. He will never lack a woman friend; neither will he cease acting thus until he the day he dies or is too enfeebled by arthritis or heart failure.
The crimes I have described are far worse than murder, or at least the majority of murders, though for the most part they escape the attention of the law. Certainly, the men who commit them sometimes commit murder as well: or, to use their own terminology, "go a little too far". "It" - that is, his torture of her - gets "out of hand" or "goes mad", and "the next thing I knew, she was lying there". But 999 of 1,000 torturers commit no murder: they are far too skilled.
I have not touched upon other crimes that seem to me, in their premeditation and repetition, to point to moral failings in those who commit them far worse than those of many a murderer. Examples would include the young men who wait outside building societies for elderly women who have made cash withdrawals in order to mug them and take their money. This kind of crime makes life a waking nightmare for many.
Nor is this claim that many crimes are worse than murder an argument for leniency towards murderers. Heinousness is not measured by intention alone. But the idea that murder is the worst crime, and that all murders are equal, is a necessary legal fiction rather than a reflection of reality.
I merely draw attention to the evil that lurks in the heart of many men, and that all that is necessary for it to flourish is that others should pass no judgement upon it.
The writer is a GP and a prison doctor
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
