Modern WisdomWhy We Should Close All Prisons & Legalise Drugs | Chris Daw QC | Modern Wisdom Podcast 211
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
155 min read · 30,728 words- 0:00 – 0:35
Intro
- CDChris Daw
... that I think all of the prisons we have now in Britain are failing us, because they are just universities of crime. They come out with no skills, they live in this alien environment behind these massive walls with barbed wire, and you treat them like animals. We cage people in prisons as if they were wild animals. And unsurprisingly, when they come out, they behave in many cases like animals. If you treat someone like an animal, they'll behave like one. If you call someone a criminal and you constantly say that they're a bad person, don't be surprised when they come out and do more bad things, 'cause that's what happens when you treat people like that.
- 0:35 – 1:26
What is QC
- CWChris Williamson
I am joined by Chris Dawe. Chris, welcome to the show.
- CDChris Daw
Thanks, Chris. Good to meet you.
- CWChris Williamson
Pleasure to have you here. What's, what's QC stand for?
- CDChris Daw
QC stands for Queen's Counsel, so one of Her Majesty's counsel, which is a special kind of barrister, lawyer, uh, and we're appointed to kind of basically be the elite of the elite when it comes to, uh, being a, being a lawyer basically, and, uh, even though I say so myself, which I do.
- CWChris Williamson
Are you the SAS of the...
- CDChris Daw
We are. They, they bring us in when it gets messy.
- CWChris Williamson
You're the, the wet work black squad sent in under the cover of darkness.
- CDChris Daw
You've got it. You've got it. We're the Navy SEALs. You gotta go underwater, you gotta, like, get through mud. It's, yeah, it's, uh, it's, uh, basically anyone who's in the proper, proper shit, we're the ones who are supposed to dig them out.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
The deepest kind and the smelliest kind.
- CWChris Williamson
I love it. I absolutely love it. Okay, so
- 1:26 – 3:04
Why is justice on trial
- CWChris Williamson
justice is on trial today. I want you to give the opening speech. Approach the microphone please, Chris Dawe QC, and give us the opening speech. Why is justice on trial?
- CDChris Daw
Well, I'm, I'm putting justice on trial 'cause I've spent 26 years as a criminal lawyer, and in all of that time, I think most of what I've done has been a complete waste of l- a waste of time, a waste of my life. Because the criminal justice system, that's the, the police, the prosecution of people, locking people up in prison, chasing after people 'cause they take drugs, all it does is make society worse. Lock people up, they just go back in again, they commit more crime when they come out, and then w- it costs us a load of money when they, when th- when th- they're in there, 50,000 a year to keep someone in prison. We're locking up young kids, and some kids as long, as young as 10 are going into the criminal courts, which is completely insane. And of course, we continue to prosecute people for drug crime when, as I say in my book, drugs have been taken for tens of millions of years by human beings, and no one's gonna, we're not gonna stop people. You can't, you can't, you can't change people's basic desire to get wasted. And that's gonna happen, it happens today, it happened 1,000 years ago, it happened 50,000 years ago. So the, the, as, as long as we keep trying to stop people doing things that, like that they wanna do that largely don't harm anyone else, we're gonna just keep on making the same old mistakes and we kill people with overdoses and gang wars and knife crime and stabbings, and I'm just sick of it. And I, and, and, and the time has come for someone in my position, uh, you know, fairly kind of senior position in the profession to say, "Do you know what? Why are we doing it? What's the point?" And, and, and that's what the book's all about. What's the point of it? And, and I don't think there is, to most of it. I think we need to change it all, start again.
- 3:04 – 5:04
Background to crime and punishment
- CDChris Daw
- CWChris Williamson
What do we need to know before we can get into this? Is there some background that we have to kind of lay, get the lay of the land about why crime and punishment's even important?
- CDChris Daw
Well, it's in the book, uh, interestingly. So you don't, you don't need to know anything before you read the book because as you know, I, I, I go right the way back to 28 million years ago when cannabis evolved on the plains of, you know, of the, of, of, of the, of China, um, and people started using cannabis in, uh, in funeral rituals so they could all get wasted to, you know, to kinda get over the grief of losing their loved ones. And, uh, you know, and, and, and I go into all of, like, why we got here, you know, what, what prisons were like going back 10,000 years ago, what they were like in the Victorian era, you know, when kids were hanged at the age of eight, you know, for stealing apples, you know. All, it's all in the book. And, and, and, and, but most of all, I hope what you agree in the book is, is, is it's just some real life stories and sort of, you know, there's some tragic ones about people who die in tragic circumstances, and you know, drug dealers getting murdered, and, and, and for what? And, and, and, and the point, I, I, the answer to your question is I don't think, I think anybody that is a human being and has ever either been a victim of crime, knows someone who is or has maybe committed a crime or takes drugs or knows someone who does, anyone who's interested in crime, justice, punishment will be interested in what's in the book.
- CWChris Williamson
My mum is a Crown Court usher.
- CDChris Daw
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
Has been-
- CDChris Daw
I know many, many of them. They're the most important people in the room.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) They're the ones that keep the wheels oiled, aren't they?
- CDChris Daw
They absolutely do. And, and do you know what? I, I, I had a what's called a pupil barrister, so it's like a trainee that I, that was training under me a few years ago. And he asked me a month or so after I started, uh, uh, you know, training him, he said, "Come on, Chris, give me the pearls of wisdom. What's the most important thing?" I said, "Keep the ushers happy."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Mum-
- CDChris Daw
If you can keep the ushers happy-
- CWChris Williamson
... Mum, are you listening?
- CDChris Daw
I hope so, because I tell you what, if you keep the ushers happy, uh, and, and, and I always have done, you know, you, you, you, you, you treat them with respect, and what happens is that when you need to get your case on 'cause you're desperate to go somewhere else, the ushers will say, "I'll make sure we get your case on next." And I bet your mum's one of the nice ones, Chris, yeah?
- 5:04 – 5:58
Red wine in court
- CWChris Williamson
She is, she is a, an absolute star, yeah, absolutely above and beyond the call of duty. She's the, uh, wet work black ops equivalent I think for the ushers. They send her in when there's-
- CDChris Daw
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
... yeah, when there's red wine everywhere from a, from an exhibit-
- CDChris Daw
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... or whatever the, whatever the hell needs to be sorted out. Um, so okay. Let's go-
- CDChris Daw
Hey, Chris, on the red wine subject, right? So here's a story for you, um, talking about that, and here, and the story relates to ushers. Many years ago, uh, a, uh, uh, a, a case that she was in 60s, very rotund, kind of red-faced kind of barrister of the old model. And w- and, and he insisted we went out and drank a load of red wine at lunchtime in the middle of a murder trial, and the judge w- sent the ushers to find us in the pub, and he said, "Oh, oh, no, no, I- I'm not coming back to court today. I'll come back tomorrow."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
And the usher had to take the message back to the high court judge that this particular QC wasn't, wasn't for doing the afternoon session.
- CWChris Williamson
And how-
- CDChris Daw
So-
- CWChris Williamson
... how did that go down?
- CDChris Daw
Well, it, it was 20 years ago, and 20 years ago, you know, the QCs could get away with stuff like that. I'm not gonna try it now though. It wouldn't work now.
- CWChris Williamson
Prison.
- 5:58 – 9:48
Prison
- CWChris Williamson
Talk to me about prison.
- CDChris Daw
Prison.
- CWChris Williamson
What do you know about prison?
- CDChris Daw
Prison? Oh, well, I've traveled all over the world. I've been to probably hundreds of prisons, certainly dozens and dozens of them in my career because I have to visit clients there. Uh, but I also spent a lot of last year researching the book, and I traveled to, you know, the deep South of America and Alabama, and saw some of the sort of hellholes of prison there, and I looked into the very different kinds of prisons that they have in places like Norway, and, and their more sort of, um, progressive kind of Scandinavian countries. And my kind of take on prisons... And, and as you know, there's a chapter in the book and it's called Why We Should Close All the Prisons, because I think all of the prisons we have now in Britain are failing us because they are just universities of crime that people go in... And I tell the story of a young man who went into prison, never taken a drug in his life, and he came out a heroin addict. Now, what, what, what are we doing? In prison, you can get heroin in prison. You can get any drugs in prison, um, and, and you c- They come out with no skills, they live in this alien environment behind these massive walls with barbed wire, and you treat them like animals. We, we c- We cage people in prisons as if they were wild animals, and unsurprisingly, when they come out, they behave, in many cases, like animals. Uh, and, and if you treat someone like an animal, they'll behave like one. If you call someone a criminal and you constantly, uh, say that they're a bad person, don't be surprised when they come out and do more bad things, 'cause that's what happens when you treat people like that. So, my, my kind of whole philosophy, and it comes across in the book, is knock them all down. All of these big Victorian prisons with the cell blocks and the heavy gates and the big heavy cell doors and the bars, knock them down. Turn them into shopping centers or apartments and start again, uh, and do something completely different. Because at the moment, we've just got a prison population that goes up and up. We've got more and more people, uh, who are being locked up for longer and longer than ever before, and yet we have got crime on the streets, we've got murders, we've got stabbings, and we've got shootings. Uh, the public don't feel safe. So, if we carry on like this, we will end up like the Americans, with 2.3 million-plus people in prison in the States, and off-the-chart levels of violent and serious crime. And that's the, that's, that's the problem with prison. It just doesn't work. It does the opposite of what we want it to do. We want to send people to prison so they come out and don't commit another crime. But what happens is, they come out and they commit loads more crimes. So, if you keep doing-
- CWChris Williamson
Why? Why? Why does, why, why does that happen?
- CDChris Daw
It happens because prisons condition people to be criminals. If you, if you s- You know, if you send someone to tennis camp and they play tennis all day, they're gonna get quite good at tennis.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
Now, if you send someone to prison and they hang out with criminals all day and they learn about crime, they're gonna come out and they're quite good at crime, but they're not gonna be any use at anything else. I mean, your tennis guy isn't gonna be any use at plumbing because all he's learned is tennis. And in prison, all they learn is crime. They don't learn anything else. There's virtually no rehabilitation. Many of them have got serious mental health problems, serious psychiatric conditions, or, or enormous emotional problems. I mean, one of the things that really absolutely drive me mad is the fact that the prisons consist of many, many people who were in the care system as kids. So, you're 15 times more likely to go to prison i- if you were in care as a child. Now, what that means is that we're locking up people who are, who have been in the care of the state for most of their childhood, and they are damaged people, and that we need to care for them. And by caring for them, it's not just to be soft. The reason ............................ outside of prison is because you want to normalize them and make them feel part of society so they can live like the rest of us. But what we do is we send them... Instead of tennis camp, we send them to crime ............................ worse criminals than, than they were when they went in. If they're lucky, 'cause many of them in there are self-harming, committing suicide. It's an absolutely animalistic and archaic institution the way that we run our prisons in this country, and they've just got to be shut down. Because, because otherwise, we're just gonna keep... It's gonna go up and up and we're gonna have more and more serious and violent crime. (music)
- 9:48 – 11:42
Purpose of prisons
- CWChris Williamson
What's the purpose, or what should be the purpose of prisons? Uh, uh, don't we need to be kept safe from all of the, all of the crims? Aren't there people, dangerous people that need to be kept away from the general public?
- CDChris Daw
There are. I mean, it's a very small number, uh, actually, because, uh, I, I mention in the book there that 69% of people in prison are in there for a non-violent crime. They're in there for a drug offense or a, or, or a fraud offense or some sort of theft offense. Uh, and, and only 31% are in there for a violent crime, and many of them are fairly low-level and trivial assaults. But when it comes to... You're right, there are psychotics. There are people who are seriously violent and dangerous, and maybe they amount to 10 or 15% of the total prison population. And yes, we need to be kept safe from them. But 99.9% of them, even the most violent ones, even the murderers, will one day come out of prison. There's only about 60 in the entire 80-odd thousand in prison who will never be released. Almost every prisoner will one day be released. So, you have to still think to yourself, okay, you might have committed a murder, but why are we focusing on hammering you, punishing you, keeping you in terrible conditions, uh, on, o- during your sentence? Why are we not focusing on the day you come out? Because it's the day you come out that matters. The day you come out, it determines whether you're gonna go and get a job, whether you're gonna be able to keep and reconnect with your family, whether you're going to be able to pay rent or a mortgage and have somewhere to live. And at the moment, many people come out of prison with nothing except the skills they've learned in crime camp while they've been in there.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
They're damaged individuals, they've got no connection with their family, they've got no job, nowhere to live. And if you, if you do that, people are gonna just go straight back on the streets, and they're gonna go straight back to crime. So, that's the reason we, we... you know, we are, we are making the problem of crime worse every day with every minute that anyone spends in our prisons.
- 11:42 – 14:03
What about policymakers
- CDChris Daw
- CWChris Williamson
What about if you're a policymaker? I don't know who the job of this lies with, whether it's the Prime Minister or some government body or something. But what if you're that particular policymaker, and you say, "Right, we're going to shut down all of the prisons," and then someone gets out and they cause a riot. They, they go on a, a, a murdering spree or there's someone who kills someone.
- CDChris Daw
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
That, that is the sort of-... press nightmare that is sufficient to probably stop this from happening, no?
- CDChris Daw
Well, that's what's happening now, time and again. People are coming out of prison and going on to commit violent crime, including murder, within a short time of their release. So I talk in the book, I tell the story of the tragic case of Lo- the two young people who were killed on London Bridge, uh, uh, last year. A- and Usman Khan, who was their killer, had been in prison for eight years, eight full years, 24 hours a day, in a high security prison. And within a year, he went out and ki- killed two young people, stabbed them to death on, on London Bridge. So that's what's happening now, Chris. At the moment, the system is that we chuck people back onto the streets and they go out and commit terrible crimes. And my argument is, if we'd done something different with him for those eight years, and it's a big opportunity, if you've got eight years 8 years with someone to work with them. I mean, if you had eight years of tennis camp, just imagine how good your backhand would be, right?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
So, I mean, I'm, I'm making light of it, but the fact is that it's just common sense, that if you spend eight years keeping someone in terrible conditions, and they mix with other terrorists and other criminals, and you do nothing to try and change their, their thought processes or give them any other alternative, uh, way to spend their life, then they're going to come out. And sadly, in that case, it was a terrible lesson. And the interesting thing about that case for me, and I, and I, again, I talk about this in the book, is that Jack Merritt, who was one of the two young men who were killed by Usman Khan, um, his father, David, after Jack's death, he came out publicly and said, "Don't use my son's death as an excuse for longer prison sentences, because my son didn't believe that long prison sentences d- uh, work, and I don't believe that they don't work." And when you have the father of someone who's just been stabbed to death by a long-term prisoner saying that, "Don't blame the shorter sentences," you need to start looking at doing something different. When a father in his grief is prepared to say that, then people need to start listening.
- 14:03 – 15:00
The evidence
- CDChris Daw
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Yeah, you're right. That's someone who's very much prepared to put their principles before their emotions, right? Well, I mean, what's-
- CDChris Daw
Well, and evi- and the evidence, because it's the evidence that matters to me. The evidence is that prison doesn't work. The evidence is that when you move to a system like they have in Norway, where you very rarely use prison, but when you do, you make it as normal as possible, people live in normal housing units, they've got kitchens, they cook, it's not a great big kind of, you know, Shawshank Redemption scenario, then the... In, in Norway, only 20% of prisoners come out and re-offend. And they're the most violent ones because they don't send the others to prison in the first place. In our system, it's up to 75%. So the Norway system, where you t- treat people humanely and you normalize the conditions works. The American, and to a large extent, the British model of kind of oppressive, uh, prison regimes with high walls and fences and all the rest of it, doesn't work. It makes crime worse and it makes people's lives worse. So just use the evidence, use common sense, apart from anything.
- CWChris Williamson
I think,
- 15:00 – 17:51
The publics idea of justice
- CWChris Williamson
upon reading the book, the thing that struck me was that I believe the public's idea of what the purpose of the current litigative, uh, makeup, the current sort of crime and punishment, uh, justice system in the UK is decoupled from what actually works to a degree where it's going to be very, very difficult to bring that bifurcation back in line. So I think that most people believe that prison is supposed to be a punishment, that there is some form of penance to be paid by someone. They've done this thing, stolen, robbed, defrauded, hurt, assaulted, whatever it might be. Um, therefore, they should have some liberties taken away, they should be put into some form of discomfort, um, that this is some kind of recompense, right, for them to come back. Um, and I think that there are some people out there who would want that even if it didn't result in less crime, because of a, a sense of, at its truest sense, how they believe justice to be performed. Does that make sense?
- CDChris Daw
It totally makes sense. And what you're describing, in a nutshell, is the Old Testament idea of an eye for an eye. And, of course, if you take the eye of someone who's taken your eye, it doesn't actually bring your eye back. Uh, and actually, you end up with someone who's lost their eye and is probably deeply resentful against the system and, and, and will go out and take someone else's. Um, but, but you're right, that that is fundamental to, to the approach to justice. And I talk about in, in ancient times, you know, going back to the Mayans and the Romans, you know, the idea that you take a life as, as, uh, or, or you impose serious harsh prison or harsh conditions or torture or something like that as, as a penalty for committing a crime, it goes back a long, long, long way. It goes thousands of thousands of years. But, but the example I give of why that doesn't matter and why we need to change our ways now is because back in those times, people thought that slavery was okay. You know, it wasn't that long ago that there w- there was slavery in the United States. And, uh, you know, i- uh, the fact of the matter is just because we've always done something doesn't mean we have to always carry on doing it. Any more than we carried on having slavery, why do we carry on having prisons that don't work and that are deeply inhumane and deeply destructive to the fabric of our society? As was slavery, uh, and as were many of the other things that we don't do anymore. So, you know, we've come a long way in some respects and we've changed certain things, but the reality is, in Britain, we still criminalize 10-year-old children. And when you just think about that for a second, it's absolutely catastrophic for the, for the young people involved and for the society that we're sending them out into when we've
- 17:51 – 21:22
The alternative
- CDChris Daw
done it.
- CWChris Williamson
What's the alternative? If we're gonna close the prisons, what are people gonna do?
- CDChris Daw
Well, my, my take on it is very straightforward, that you look to the examples of prison systems that do work, um, uh, you use them as sparingly as possible. So for the 71%, uh, sorry, the 69% of, of prisoners who are non-violent, I would send very, very few of them into a custodial environment or a prison environment at all, because most of them are capable of working and of, of contributing to society, of paying taxes and looking after their kids. And the way in which you, if you have to restrict their movement for a period of time, we have the technology to do that now. We have, you know, retina scans, we have, uh, voice recognition, we have fingerprint scans. You, you can imprison people in their own homes if you have to, and you can allow them the liberty to go out and work if, uh, you know, as part of the day. Uh, and you can allow them to, to have restrictions, to go to one place but not to others. There's all this technology is available, and it would cost a fraction of keeping someone locked up in an actual prison, which as I say is on average 50,000 pounds a year to keep someone in prison. You know, for, for a fraction of that, you could have the technology to monitor them wherever they go. You know where they are, you know what they're doing, and you can allow them to normalize their lives again with a degree of control, as much as necessary. You know, the probation officer can check in via Zoom every day. "What are you up to? What's happening?"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
Yeah? But at the moment, they trudge along to the probation office once a month, there's no supervision, and unsurprisingly they're either back on drugs, or they're back selling drugs, or they're back committing crime. But use the technology instead of the walls. That's the point I'm making. For the vast majority of non-violent and not inherently dangerous prisoners, and for the rest and the ones that have to be imprisoned because they represent a risk to the public as they might commit a rape or a murder or, or a serious, uh, violent robbery, keep the prison conditions as normal as possible. Have them living not in cells in cellblocks with jangling keys and all the rest of it. Have them living in normal residential blocks of accommodation with, with kitchens to prepare their own food, with rooms. Um, and you know, yes, you've got to secure the perimeter for the most dangerous people, but you actually don't need a 40-foot-high concrete or brick wall to secure a perimeter these days. Again, when you have all of the technology we have, you know, to... Thermal imaging and everything else to, to make sure that people can't escape. All you need is a fairly unobtrusive fence of sufficient height to stop people getting out. What you don't need... And, and therefore people will move around relatively freely inside. Yeah, uh, only the absolute tiny number of immediately violent people who are likely to harm anyone that comes in their sight will need to be secured in what, what might look like a cell. But you keep it as normal as possible, and the reason for that is, going back to the point I made earlier on, if you treat people normally, they are much more likely to behave normally when they come out of that environment. So, you know, it's, it's not something that you can do overnight. I'm not suggesting that you start, you know, next week with the bulldozer, knock every prison and let everybody out. It would take... It would be a rolling program of replacing one group of prisons with another, and replacing in policy terms, instead of locking people up, using all of the technology which is all available to keep them secure in their homes or in another environment. It might be, might be a hostel or it might be somewhere else depending on their circumstances. But don't put them behind these monstrosities o- of, of, of concrete walls and great big brick walls where their soul and their spirit will be sapped and destroyed, and they'll come out violent and angry, 'cause that's what happens now.
- 21:22 – 25:07
Less fear of crime
- CWChris Williamson
Is making the consequences of committing a crime by prison now being at home with your family, potentially still being able to go to work with more liberty and access to fresh air and so on and so forth, uh, whenever you want, does that not act as less of a deterrent? Is that not going to cause people to-
- CDChris Daw
Well-
- CWChris Williamson
... have less fear about committing crime in the first place?
- CDChris Daw
Well, the evidence all suggests that it doesn't, because in every, uh, form of sentencing, the least punitive sentencing and the most normal the lifestyle of the person who's been sentenced, the less likely they are to commit another crime. So the, the one form of punishment, the one form of sentence that has the largest rate of recidivism or re-offending is prison. Everything else has a lower rate of recidivism. And it's not surprising, is it? Because as I say, if you are normalized and allowed to live in society with whatever restrictions are needed, um, you, you have continuity of your life. You can maintain very important things. All of us take for granted... Uh, you mentioned your mom being usher. All of us take for granted that we have these sort of family networks. Most of us do, anyway. We have our parents or we have, you know, our, our, our other half or, or kids or, or a wider network of family and friends. People in prison have none of that. Most of that disappears while... Particularly when people are serving very long sentences. So the point about keeping people in the community is those are the things that keep most of us grounded and most of us on the... You know, even if we have tough times and we might be feeling, again, angry about stuff, we've got people around us and we've got support mechanisms. And, and that's why keeping people out of prison unless it's absolutely essential is so much more successful at keeping people in the long run from committing more crimes. And it's an absolute cast-iron statistical fact, wherever you look in the world, that the worst outcomes are the most punitive prisons. They create the most recidivism, the most re-offending. So again, it- it- it... Anybody... I- if people want to have an eye for an eye, and, and the public do vote for it. You know, when a politician says, "Oh, we're gonna increase sentences for criminals," the p- the public clap and they vote for it. So obviously people make that choice with their eyes open, realizing as you... A point you made earlier, Chris. Well, ma- maybe people won't care. Maybe people won't care if we double the risk that someone commit a mur- another murder provided we punish them harshly. Well, if people are prepared to accept the risk that their son or their daughter will be murdered because we are giving somebody a harsh sentence in prison, then people need to accept that. But that needs to be put on the table as part of the debate, and politicians need to acknowledge the, the, the, that the sentences and the, and the j- you know, long, long sentences for things like drug crime, they need to say, "Okay, we're gonna do this 'cause you want us to, not because it works."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDChris Daw
And then we'll see what... We'll see what the debate looks like when people are honest. At the moment, there's no honesty. You hear, you hear the Home Secretary Priti Patel, you hear the Prime Minister before the election, get tough on criminals, crack down, make them s- you know, quiver in their boots. Criminals don't quiver in their boots at the thought of being locked up in prison 'cause they don't think they're gonna get caught.... pre- th- that, that's the most important part of criminal justice and deterrence. Eh, none of my clients over 26 years went out one day and thought, said, "I know I'm gonna get caught for this and I'm gonna get 10 years, but I'm gonna do it anyway." They don't think they're gonna get caught. That's why prison isn't a deterrent. That's why it isn't a deterrent in America where you can get life without parole for selling an ounce of weed in some states. You know, p- people don't get up in the morning and think, "Oh, I could get life without parole for this. I'm gonna go and sell the weed anyway." They think, "I'm gonna get away with it." And most of the time, they do. And that's why deterrence in prison doesn't work, because people don't think about getting caught. What you need to look at is why are people out there doing these things in the first place, and they're out there in most cases because they have broken lives, and broken lives based on a broken childhood, and that's why I'm so keen on reforming the way we deal with children in particular when they get caught up in the
- 25:07 – 29:14
Why are children never criminals
- CDChris Daw
criminal system.
- CWChris Williamson
Let's talk about it. Why, why are cr- are children never criminals?
- CDChris Daw
Because I... uh, uh, one of the things that I just don't understand is the mentality that says, uh, you have to be 18 to be wise enough and mature enough to vote, you have to be 18 to make a choice to drink alcohol or to smoke cigarettes, and there are all sorts of other age restrictions, you know, for different activity. You have to be 21, I think, to drive a lorry, for example. But somehow or other, at the age of 10, you know, just think about a 10-year-old child. I mean, I dunno if you, if you, if you know, if you have kids in your family, I mean I've got four kids of my own, uh, including an, an 11-year-old, um, and, and a nine-year-old actually, and the idea that either of them would have the kind of maturity to understand what crime is... Yes, they know right from wrong on a basic, simple level, but the idea that you treat them the same, having the same understanding of crime as an 18-year-old or a 70, 70-year-old is just ridiculous. It's just absolutely... And, and I, and I, I explain in the book how there are countries and, and, uh, you know, even Saudi Arabia has an older age of criminal responsibility than us, you know, and they're hardly a beacon of civilization when it comes to-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
... criminal justice. But, but Luxembourg is the beacon for me because in Luxembourg, what I've, uh, advocated in the book is the law. In other words, you can't be convicted of any crime unless you are 18 or over. It's the same age to vote and it's the same age that you're capable of, deemed capable of committing a crime. And in their system, if a child commits what would be a crime for an adult, they don't call him a criminal, they don't call him a prisoner, they just call him a child, and they say, "Okay, a 10-year-old or 11-year-old or even a 15-year-old has done a bad thing," what they do is they work with them in an educational environment. They don't put them in a prison environment. And our young offenders institutions are prisons in all but name, and they are hellholes for those young people inside them, uh, who are called young offenders. They're labeled young offenders. Uh, p- point I was making earlier, you label someone with something, they will be that thing, they will act to that, that description and that label. And young offenders become adult criminals, and often they go in and out in a revolving door for 20 or 30 years, and they cost us millions, both in terms of the cost of locking them up and the crimes they commit, and we just keep on doing it. So if you divert children from 10, 11, 12 years old when most of the sort of the more hardcore kind of element that end up in prison start their life of crime or their life of involvement with the police, if you divert them at 10, 11, 12 away from the criminal justice system and into the education system and the welfare system, then you have a chance of saving them from that revolving door for the rest of their life, and saving the rest of us a load of money and a load of grief.
- CWChris Williamson
Does that mean no such thing as a criminal record for people under the age of 18?
- CDChris Daw
Absolutely not. There should not be a criminal record for someone under the age of 18. And, and again, it goes back to the same point we were discussing earlier about, about yes, there's a hardcore of people in our society who are inherently dangerous. They might assault people, rape people, or, or, or, or hurt people in one way or another. Amongst children, that group is tiny. A tiny number of 10, 11, 12-year-olds are already so dangerous that they have to be physically secured from others. It's a tiny, tiny number. But even those, they're not gonna spend their life locked away, so you still have to be humanely working on what it is that is going to, uh, make them change the way they're living their lives. And, and as I said, many of them that gets caught up in the system, pro-... you know, the majority in fact in the early part of the, uh, criminal justice, the youth justice system, many of them, um, are ju- are just a product of, of a horrific childhood and, and, and, and an experience of being in the care system. And we're responsible for that, Chris. You, you, me, the rest of us, the adults that vote for the way in which society organizes itself and, and decides what care, what the care system is and what it looks like, and decide how much money to spend on it, and decide how much we care about it, we're responsible for those kids, and we need to take responsibility, not just throw them in youth prisons and then in adult prisons in later life.
- 29:14 – 35:42
Why are you proposing that we legalize drugs
- CDChris Daw
- CWChris Williamson
Got you. What about drugs? Why are you, you, you, uh, proposing that we legalize drugs? All drugs? Every drug? Should they be available on a street corner?
- CDChris Daw
No, not on a street corner, but yes to all drugs. Um, so my model for the licensing and regulation of drugs... So I don't use the word legalization, because what you don't do is allow drug dealers to just sell drugs freely, because that's, that's one of the worst elements of the drug market we have now is that the market is in the hands of violent criminals, and I've represented many of them. Uh, and, and they care about only one thing, and that is profit and getting as many people as possible to take drugs. So you take the market away from them, and you have licensed, regulated, uh, supply networks which are c- highly regulated by the state, uh, just as pubs are. You know, if you're a, if you're a serious criminal, you can't get a license to run a pub. You can't get a license to sell alcohol. Um, alcohol is a highly regulated product that, you know, that you have to have, uh, warning labels, you have to have a percentage of alcohol on the label. People have to know exactly what they're getting when they buy alcohol, and my model for regulation is exactly the same as alcohol. So you have age restrictions on certain products which might be different for different products, but at the end of the day, the idea is, and I tell the story, that probably the most tragic section of the whole book is a, is the story of Martha Fernback, who was a young girl of 15 who went out one Saturday and with her friends, who were all sort of teenagers around the same age, they decided to take some MDMA.... some ecstasy, in effect. Um, so MD- MDMA powder. And they'd done it a couple of times before and it was okay. But on this occasion, Martha ended up with a bag of MDMA powder that was 91% pure and she took enough ... She had no idea what she was taking because there's no label on it. She took enough to kill a horse, and she died within a couple of hours of taking, or a couple of days I should say, of taking the, the MDMA powder. And the interesting thing about that, I mean, it's a horrific thought that a 15-year-old's got this, this see-through packet. You know, if, if s- if she asked someone to go to the off-license for her, to buy a bottle of wine or, you know, uh, uh, or whatever, wh- wh- whatever she might want in, in terms of alcohol, she might get very drunk but she'd, she'd know what she was doing. She'd know what was going into her body. Um, and she might make bad choices, like many of us did as teenagers. Um, but, but when it comes to drugs, you just get a see-through packet from a dealer in a back alley, and you don't know whether it's 91% or 1%, or 0%. And, and it's the equivalent of sending a child into a pub and saying, "Drink this drink, and we're not telling you what's in it. And it might kill you, but we don't know until you've drunk it." And that's the way that we're allowing drugs to enter into people's bodies in our society. And, and, and it's all based on an absolutely ridiculous belief that we can stop people taking drugs by making it a crime. You know, people have been taking drugs, as I say in the book, for hundreds of millions of years, since the beginning of evolution of, of the modern human. There is evidence of people taking psychotropic, psychoactive plants, people have been taking drugs of one kind or another for the entire history of human evolution. So the whole idea that you're gonna stop people doing something so fundamental as taking drugs is ridiculous. And if you can't stop people doing it, you need to make it as safe as possible, and you need to also, not only make it safe for the users who are overdosing in massive numbers because of the very features I've just pointed out, but you also need to wipe out the crimes that these people commit. Because to keep up a, a habit of street drugs, of heroin or crack or even a heavy cocaine habit, it costs hundreds of pounds a day. And the only way that drug users can get hold of hundreds of pounds a day is to commit crime or to sell themselves on the street. Uh, uh, and many, sadly, many drug users are in the sex, uh, industry, uh, often in a very, very poor state of mental and physical health and selling themselves to strangers, just to fund a habit, where they should be getting those drugs in a much more humane, licensed system. And I saw it in action in Switzerland, as you know from the book. You know, I saw the heroin-assisted treatment program where, you know, they treat heroin users as if they have a medical condition that needs to be helped. They don't treat them as criminals that need to be kind of marginalized from society and locked up. And one of, one of, one of the wonderful things, Chris ... And I'm sorry to, to, to go on about this 'cause it's m- it's one of my major passions, but, but one of the things that, that, that, that the head of that heroin-assisted, uh, treatment program told me was, the, the, the users of that service, lon- mo- mostly long-term chronic heroin addicts, they already think that they're shit when they go in there. They don't need the police or the courts or someone else telling them they're shit. They feel like shit already, and that's one of the many reasons why, sadly, they become addicted to heroin. It's only when you show your compassion and kindness and give them proper medical care, and give them safe heroin, safe needles, you test them for HIV, you test them for hepatitis, you give them healthcare, that's when they start to feel less shit about themselves, and that's when they start to take fewer drugs. And the success of that program in getting people off drugs by actually giving them heroin is quite unbelievable compared to any comparable, uh, criminal justice outcome where the success of getting people off drugs is negative. In fact, more people take drugs when they've gone through the system than before they went in.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
It's c- it's crazy. We're killing people. We're killing people-
- CWChris Williamson
It's so-
- CDChris Daw
... in this country.
- CWChris Williamson
... it's so circular. The crime is needed to pay for the drugs which are overpriced because the dealers, uh, there's too much, um, costing implications in terms of transportation, and the ability-
- CDChris Daw
Correct.
- CWChris Williamson
... for the quality to be, uh, fucked around with which means... So I, I first heard about the, um, Switzerland's heroin program from Johann Hari's Chasing the Scream.
- CDChris Daw
Yeah. Yeah, I did a call with him recently, a, uh, an online event with him. He's a great guy.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes, yeah, past Modern Wisdom guest and a wonderful, wonderful fellow.
- CDChris Daw
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I imagine that you two had a really good conversation.
- CDChris Daw
We did, yeah, we did. It was a ... He, he, uh, I mean, I mean, anybody that is prepared to, to s- to speak truth to power, as he d- as he has done-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- CDChris Daw
... over, in recent years-
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- CDChris Daw
... is someone that needs to be listened to.
- CWChris Williamson
No, absolutely. He's a, a, a real, sort of voice for it. So again, (laughs) with this, there's just ... Each of the chapters, Closing Prisons, Children Being Criminals, Legalizing Drugs, Good and Evil, Internet of Crime, like all of the stuff in your book is a increasingly difficult red pill to swallow about what the common held narrative, perhaps either by press or by our own, um, perception,
- 35:42 – 43:07
What is effective policy making
- CWChris Williamson
our own uninformed perception of what is effective policymaking and what is effective justice, um, those two things continue to just be f- further and further apart. Had it not have been for me reading Chasing the Scream by, uh, Johann, I would've looked at why should we legalize drugs as a fucking mental title. But-
- CDChris Daw
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... having read that, and then I'm like, increasingly, more and more and more people that I respect and who have done the work and have the stats to back it up agree with you.
- CDChris Daw
Yeah, and we're all- we're actually trying it a little bit. I think we've d- we're dipping our toe in the water. I say we, but the Scottish are dipping their toe in the water with the heroin-assisted treatment program on a, on a small scale. But the truth of it is, that, that I would love the Home Secretary or the Prime Minister to go and visit that clinic in, in ... that I went to in Geneva, and indeed some of the other facilities that I visited in, in Switzerland, like the, uh, consumption rooms where people can take their own drugs, uh, which is not ideal from my point of view, but at least they can take their drugs in hygienic conditions, they get given clean needles, they get given the opportunity to, to wash, to access healthcare. Uh, I, I'd prefer that they were, they were all in, in, in a treatment program, but, but, but at least they are kept safe, and much safer than they would be in Britain. Um, but I would love our politicians to go and visit some of those programs instead of just standing on their soapbox saying, "Drugs are terrible, drug crime's terrible, and we need to just crack down on it all the time." Because admi- every time you crack down ... We've had all these raids recently.... uh, even during lockdown, drug crime was going up and up. 'Cause drug, drug dealers are relentless. They're never gonna stop because there's so much money in it, as you say.
- CWChris Williamson
They're industrious, indus- industrious chaps.
- CDChris Daw
They are. They are very ingenious. And I've had drugs, uh, drug-trafficking clients who are major dealers, you know, who are bringing in tons of weed a month or tens of millions of cocaine a month into the country. And they are some of the most bright, sophisticated, uh, and business-minded people I've ever met, because it is a business. And as you say, it's a logistics business. It's about, how do you get poppies in Afghanistan, turned into heroin, and then transported in packets or in, in, i- i- in, uh, in vehicles or by any other means? How do you get that to someone's vein in London or Manchester or, or, or Carlisle? And, and every time you move it from A to B, there's a l- there's a layer of profit, and there's someone who has to be bribed, and there's... You can produce pharmaceutical heroin for almost nothing. It's a very cheap product to produce, and, and, and that's why people say, "Oh, but you're g- giving them thousands of pounds worth of heroin a week for free." You're not. You're giving them, you know, maybe less than 100 pounds a week, 'cause it doesn't cost that much to produce most drugs. What costs money is to illegally transport them from where they originate to someone who wants to use it in a, in a, in a, in a Western society. That's why you go into the markets in Pakistan or Afghanistan, you can buy a kilo of heroin for about $1,000. By the time that reaches the streets of Britain, it's $100,000-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
... and that's why it's so much. That's why. A pure kilo of heroin, uh, it goes up from $1,000 to $100,000 by the time it's been transported and cut onto the streets. So the government could license heroin production, as they have done of course, and heroin is produced for pharmaceutical reasons, and they could produce it for next to nothing. And we would cut out all of that criminal profit, and we would get rid of those criminals once and for all.
- CWChris Williamson
Who would do it? Are you gonna have off licenses on, uh, uh, sort of, uh, treatment facilities like pharmacies where people can go and get-
- CDChris Daw
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... MDMA?
- CDChris Daw
I think that it would make sense to have the premises initially operated directly by the state, and there are different types of premises. So rather than private business making a profit from it, um, I think it... Because the government has to be able to supply... Sorry. Government has to be able to supply, um, a- and control the price, because if the government can't control the price, then you may create the room for there to, for the criminals to remain in the market. So y- the government has to very precisely control the price. And of course, w- with alcohol, prices vary. There's no, there's no restriction on pricing in alcohol. Uh, it can go up, it can go down. But I think you need to be very careful. So, and you'd need different kinds of facilities. So with heroin, which is a drug almost entirely of addiction, it's not a, not a drug that people take-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDChris Daw
... uh, most, mostly on a night out or a weekend, uh, or a weekend clubbing or whatever. With heroin, you would have medical facilities to dispense heroin in the Swiss model. With other drugs that you... I don't call them recreational drugs because, because drugs are just drugs, you know, and people use them for... Even so-called recreational drugs like ecstasy, cocaine, and cannabis are often, uh, used by people who have got, you know, serious issues. They may have addictions. They may have other kind of, um, uh, psychiatric or emotional problems that cause them to try and mask pain, just as people do with alcohol. So I, I, I... You know, yes, and there are others. There are, you know, fairly, fair number of drug users who just use drugs for recreation. They go out on the weekend and it rel- it has relatively little ill effect. They carry on with their life and their work. And I think those drugs that we might call recreational drugs, you would access them through a licensed dispensary. And, and initially, I think it would have to be a government-run one, uh, because I just don't like the idea of private business getting into the, the profit, uh, model for, for drugs. I don't think it works for, for drugs. Um, and I'm not sure we would have a profit model alcohol industry if we'd started, you know, if we started again. Um, but I would, I would have licensed dispensaries. And you'd go in, you'd have to tick a couple of boxes, sign a couple of forms, and, and you make it relatively straightforward to get the drugs, um, but you would nevertheless... Everybody that got drugs, they would have access to, you know, help lines or even face-to-face counseling if they felt that they had a problem. And it, and that, you don't get that from drug dealers. Drug dealers can't say-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
... "Okay, we'll give you your drugs. Tick this box. Here's a number and a card. If you think you've got a problem, you know, ring this number and we'll get you to see someone tomorrow who can give you some help, some drug therapy"
- CWChris Williamson
They need, they need to up their game. Drug, drug dealers really should try and improve their service if they can.
- CDChris Daw
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
You have to... The aftercare is... You know, Apple, Apple Care. "I'm gonna... Do you want the extended warranty on this, on this bag of MDMA?"
- CDChris Daw
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Loads of different ways that we could go about it. So here's-
- CDChris Daw
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Just as you're speaking and, and having really enjoyed the book, here's what, here's my suggestion or here's my thoughts on what I think drives this point home and what I think is missing. And it's m- it's an emotive way to grab people's attention, and the reason I say that is I have a buddy, Alex O'Connor, who's a, a vegan philosopher.
- CDChris Daw
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, so he justifies veganism from an armchair philosophy perspective, and he has wholly convinced me of the moral position of veganism-
- CDChris Daw
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... and, and yet I don't have as much of a visceral response as when I see chicks getting thrown into a grinder.
- CDChris Daw
No.
- CWChris Williamson
Now, I don't, I don't disagree that you need the philosophical-
- CDChris Daw
Where do you, where do you go out, Chris, where you see chicks getting thrown into grinders? Where, where, where, where is this place?
- 43:07 – 48:07
Drug dealers
- CWChris Williamson
He's convinced me of the moral framework that underpins it-
- CDChris Daw
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... but it does not drive that point home. This is something, as much as I'm not a huge fan of his podcast, but it's something that I think Russell Brand has done-
- CDChris Daw
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, fantastically with some of his stuff on TV, is how he's re-... purposed, um, sort of moved the window of how people view drug dealers. I think a lot of the general public, especially like the kind of classic British middle class, just see it as people having a low-key party 24/7. The heroin dealers have, you know, they're in, uh, smoky, hazy rooms somewhere. It's like a, you know, like a real budget version of probably what Dan Bilzerian sees. Uh, the reality appears to be much, much more, um, disgusting.
- CDChris Daw
Well, yeah, drug dealers are mostly... The great majority of so-called drug dealers are actually just low-level users who are just selling on behalf of someone else, or they're, they're cutting their own drugs just to try and get enough for themselves. Many of them have got serious health problems. I mean, I tell this tragic story in the book of, of a, of a, of a guy who got... you know, he was a heroin user, and he got caught up in, uh, in low-level dealing, and he got beaten to death for a, uh, for, for allegedly stealing a-
- CWChris Williamson
Behind a, behind a caravan, yeah.
- CDChris Daw
Yeah, allegedly stealing a few hundred quid from, from his boss, basically, who was also a low-level dealer himself. And that's what happens in a criminal market. And, and so yes, I, I talked about the sort of the, the, what you might call the sort of big time drug dealers, uh, who, who are... who represent... Like anything, you know, there's only one chief exec of, you know, Tesco's. Most people are shelf stackers and work on the tills. And the drug market's the same. There's only one guy who's really making it big. Everybody else along the way has a miserable life where they're much more likely to die young, they're much more likely to get serious health problems. So the whole industry is built on misery, as it stands at the moment.
- CWChris Williamson
Do we have a equivalent of RICO in the UK?
- CDChris Daw
Uh, not so much. Uh, we, we don't specifically have legislation that targets, targets gang activities as a whole, um, but we have plenty of laws, uh, that cover, uh, you know, organized crime activity, but they are... they're usually related to specific conduct, like supplying class A drugs or, or serious fraud or, or people trafficking. So we don't, we don't go down the American kind of federal model of trying to criminalize whole gangs just for being gangs. Um, we, we focus on them committing specific crimes. Um, but it amounts to much the same because most organized crime activity is around the drug market, uh, by, by volume, by, by the number of people involved, and by the value of the... of, of, of the transactions. So we, we... you know, and we spend a vast amount. We spend billions on criminalizing the drug ta- trade, on, on investigating and prosecuting drug dealers, and we spend a tiny fraction of that on health services for serious long-term drug users, and that's an absolute scandal. Because if we did try to help users with real medical programs that have been proven all over the world to work, we'd have a... not only we would have a kinder society, but we'd have a much safer one, uh, not just for them, but for all of us. And that's the real tragedy, that we're, we're doing all of these things, we're criminalizing mostly fairly hopeless people for selling a few... you know, an ounce here or, or a few grams there, and, and, and sometimes get sent, in the way, for five, six, seven years for selling, like I say, an ounce of coke or something like that. Why? What's the point of that? What does that achieve? I'll tell you what it achieves. It takes one dealer off the street, takes one ounce of coke, or even if it's 100 kilos, all that happens is if you get a drug drought, because there's been loads of enforcement activity, the price goes up, so the profits go up.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
And (laughs) , you know, it's supply and demand. If, if you-
- CWChris Williamson
Adam Smith turning over in his grave here, yeah.
- CDChris Daw
Oh, you know what? Absolutely, absolutely. And we're, and we're, we just don't get it. And, and, and that's why lockdown drug crime was up, because there was a big interruption to-
- CWChris Williamson
Was it really?
- CDChris Daw
Yeah, absolutely. I'll tell you why. And there was a big... there was a load of drug violence and gang violence going on during lockdown, and I know that from speaking to those who were kind of directly involved in policing those activities. Um, and the reason was because there was an interruption in the supply chain because it was very difficult to move anything during lockdown-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDChris Daw
... in the first weeks of lockdown. So what happens is that people are then selling stock, or what little they can get through, at much higher prices, and that means there's even more of a premium on territory. If you, if your... if you can sell your kilo for 300 grand on the street instead of a hundred, you need to make sure no one else is selling on your streets because you want the 300 grand. So that's why the stabbings and the murders carried on during lockdown. Uh, they carried on because people could get even more profit than they could ever get before. Um, and, and, j-... and if that doesn't tell you that you're doing something wrong, that you're locking, you're locking down the whole of society, but the drug market still operates, if that doesn't tell you that the war on drugs is always going to fail, then nothing will.
- CWChris Williamson
It's
- 48:07 – 52:29
Dark web
- CWChris Williamson
a fucking... it's a robust market, Chris. If we could-
- CDChris Daw
Totally, uh, since time began.
- CWChris Williamson
If we could harness the innovative power and the, uh, logistical and operational talents... Um, I've got, I've got a number of different tasks that need doing inside of my company that I... that would be fantastic for someone with the lateral thinking that-
- CDChris Daw
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, is really common in the drug market, apparently. What did you... what did you learn about the dark web and the internet of crime? You had a look at that.
- CDChris Daw
Yeah, I did, and, and it's a fascinating topic, as you know. It kind of... it's... it may well lead into another book, I suspect, um, because it... I, I was absolutely fascinated by it. I, I, I talk in the, in the book, in that particular... in the epilogue of the book about my involvement in one of the original kind of internet-based, kind of internet piracy cases many years ago, which looks very quaint compared to the, to, to the dark web now, you know. It's just basically-
- CWChris Williamson
It's a cute, it's a cute cottage industry, that.
- CDChris Daw
Yeah. Uh, uh, well, back then, it was just getting a load of DVD recorders and, and, and, you know, um, creating copies of DVDs or CDs or whatever. And of course, that whole world has changed and, and, and, you know, and it's a very different world now. But no, I talk in the book about my own kind of journey, if you like, into the dark web and, and, and, and how surprising it was to me that it was so easy to access, because, uh, I had, I had some help with it, but it took...... less than 10 minutes to go from Google and just, just looking at normal, like, websites, like the BBC, et cetera. And then suddenly, within 10 minutes of setting up a VPN and all the rest of it, I'm being offered any drug I could possibly imagine, in any quantity, in any purity. I'm being offered guns, I'm being offered hitmen, I'm being offered all sorts-
- CWChris Williamson
Down the rabbit hole there. (laughs)
- CDChris Daw
Down the rabbit hole, I'm telling you.
- CWChris Williamson
Took a ... I took a left, I took a left turn at Google. Bloody hell, don't do that again.
- CDChris Daw
I know. It's ... I mean, it, you, you'd have to deliberately do it. Uh, you have to download the right software, you have to have-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- CDChris Daw
... the right browsers and everything else. And, and you wouldn't get there by accident, that's the whole point. It doesn't, it's not accessible via ordinary, uh, browsers or, or, or via ordinary, uh, internet connections. You ha- you have to do it via a VPN, et cetera, or you can't get there. But once you get there, all of this darkness is there. All of this unregulated criminal market. And, you know, the fact that you can buy firearms where they promise they will send the components, they will break it down into however many pieces, they'll send you a firearm with bullets, they'll break it down into 10 or 20 pieces and get it through customs without detection. And if you lose one of the pieces, they'll send you a replacement, and you then reassemble the firearm, you get bullets included in the deal. And Bob's your uncle, you're on the street with a, with a, with an AK-47 within sort of 48 hours of placing your order. And, and it, it's a scary, scary world. And, and it made me sort of think that much of my kind of 25 years plus in criminal law looks like not ... it doesn't look like it's the last quarter century; it looks like it was a, a century ago. You know? But when I started out, people still very regularly went out with shotguns and balaclavas and committed armed robberies. That hardly happens now because of DNA evidence and, and tracking of vehicles and ANPR, which is, you know, number plate recognition systems. You know, it's very few. And, and of course they ink, they, they have special dyes on all the bank notes. So you can hardly ever get away with armed robbery. But, but on the internet, on the dark web, you can get away with almost anything, and it's really absolutely scary. But it's also fascinating. I found it fascinating because, you know, it, it was a world that I didn't really know, and it very rarely meet, gets into the sort of hands of the criminal courts because people can operate from anywhere. I mean, while I was on there, you know, my VPN was, was moving location to, obviously to avoid any form of detection. And one minute it looked like I was in South Korea, then I was somewhere else, and you-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
It's impossible to track. Venezuela, you know, and, and, and, and, and, you know, there's gonna be a real challenge in our society. So, so definitely looking ahead to potentially another book, and, and I ... my book's only published today, so maybe this is looking ahead too quickly, but, but I'm gonna go to Russia and some of these other places where they have these sort of deep web, dark web rather, uh, kind of hackers and so on, who are, who are masterminding hundreds of millions and billions, in fact, of dollars a year in trade, in drugs and crime and people. You know, there's lots of child prostitution. Um, and, and, and, and it'll be fascinating to see what's happening. But also, uh, in the next book, I may look at how law enforcement are responding to it, and whether in fact, as I, as I say in the book, it's a battle that can never be won. Or if we-
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I mean, it's, it's not fucking Kansas anymore, this, is it?
- CDChris Daw
No, you're absolutely
- 52:29 – 55:29
Technology and wealth
- CDChris Daw
right.
- CWChris Williamson
Absolutely not. And I, I think you're correct as well that, as with everything at the moment, if you look at the, um, amount of wealth that someone like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates has been able to accrue, leveraged by technology, it's orders of magnitude more than-
- CDChris Daw
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... the, the next closest, like, well, uh, textile manu- cotton manufacturer from like the 1800s or something. Like, you know, what, what we, what are we comparing this to? Because the amount of leverage you can get on technology is so disproportionate. And then-
- CDChris Daw
That's true.
- CWChris Williamson
... if you roll that forward, it's not like criminals ... As we've identified, they're fucking smart, like really-
- CDChris Daw
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... really scary, scary smart. Um, and-
- CDChris Daw
Some of them, not all of them, Chris. But yeah, you're right.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm sure you, I'm sure you've encountered your, uh-
- CDChris Daw
The ones that don't get caught are the, are the smartest, and so they never cross my-
- CWChris Williamson
The ones that you don't know about.
- CDChris Daw
They never come across my desk.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh-huh. Yeah.
- CDChris Daw
Um, but, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- CDChris Daw
But even the ones who do, you're absolutely right. I, I, I made the point. I mean, I had a, I had a drug dealing client. He was importing t- uh, I think a couple of tons of weed a week. He was one of the largest, uh, sort of importers of weed and, and he did g- get himself caught. And, and he only got caught actually because the police had put surveillance devices in his house, uh, and were recording all of his conversations even in his house, which is really quite unusual and, and, and was unusual then to get a warrant for, for domestic sort of property like that. Um, but I remember sitting down with him. I went to see him in prison many, many times, and eventually he, you know, we, we did a deal and he got a relatively light sentence. But I, but I remember saying to him, um, you know, uh, at the time, "You know, you're such a clever guy. You've got ... You're all over this." He knew every page of the evidence, he was incredibly articulate, fiercely intelligent. But he dropped out of school at 14 and, and ended up just going, going and sort of, kind of bumming around and committing crime. And, and then just the only world he knew was crime, and so he applied that fierce intelligence and that ... And he had enormous business sense. You know, that kind of ... You know how the best entrepreneurs can spot an opportunity, can ... and can motivate the troops and the staff?
- CWChris Williamson
It's like they're built for it, isn't it? It's like-
- CDChris Daw
Yeah, and you were built for that.
- CWChris Williamson
... their brains align with the operation.
- CDChris Daw
Yeah. But he had no education, and he had no, no formal education of any kind, and he just decided to apply his mind to a business that was illegal, and he made millions from it until he got caught. Unfortunately for him, because it was cannabis rather than cocaine or heroin, he ended up doing I think about four years, whereas if it had been cocaine or heroin, and this no doubt was part of his calculation actually, uh, but if it had been cocaine or heroin, he would've got 25 or 30 years-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDChris Daw
... for the same thing. So, um, you know? Some- And, and even that was a ... he was taking a calculated risk-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- CDChris Daw
... as to, as, as to which drug to deal. You know? Um-
- CWChris Williamson
The, uh, I, I think the, um, the dark web stuff, I, I went really, really far down the rabbit hole of the Ross Ulbricht, uh, um-
- CDChris Daw
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... case, um, who was the, the guy, guy behind the original Silk Road. And I've done-
- CDChris Daw
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... my fair, (laughs) my fair bit of, uh, of rabbit hole tumbling about that.
- 55:29 – 57:19
Common criticisms
- CDChris Daw
- CWChris Williamson
If you, if you wanna road trip me out to Russia, I, I have no-... there has never been a flight I haven't got on that someone's suggested. Haven't bottled a dare since 2001, and I don't intend on doing it now, Chris Doyle QC. Um-
- CDChris Daw
No.
- CWChris Williamson
... what's the most common criticisms about your proposals? Can you steel man the other side of this argument?
- CDChris Daw
Yeah, definitely. So, so the, the argument I get most is, what about the victims? You know, victims want justice, victims want punishment. Uh, and, and they don't care about all of your ideas and what does or doesn't work. If they've been raped, or if they've been robbed, or if they've had their, you know, their house burgled, they wanna see some vengeance, they wanna see some justice. So, so that's one of the arguments that's put to me. As far as drugs are concerned, the false argument is always put, which is, we're gonna have more drug use. And, and actually, in any deregulated or in particular, heavily regulated or licensed market, what you see is falling levels of drug use. They saw it when they decriminalized, uh, the possession of drugs in Portugal, uh, many years ago, and they have had massively positive outcomes from that, and, and not, they don't go far enough for me, because they, because they still allow criminals to deal drugs. Um, but they, they decriminalized, uh, users and they made users part of the healthcare system. Yu- drug use fell, crime fell, and health outcomes improved. So, so those arguments are made, um, a- a- and, and so far as children are concerned, I always get this, what about the Jamie Bulger case?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
They know, they know right from wrong a- at that age, and therefore, they should be able to take the consequences. So, so people have this kind of view, and, and, and you know, it's not an unusual one, and I, I, I, I'm quite happy to accept, Chris, that I'm probably in the minority of about 30% of the population that's prepared to kind of listen to evidence and to think about these things without getting carried away with the gut and the emotion of just let's-
- CWChris Williamson
Being just passionate about it's hard, man.
- 57:19 – 1:11:06
Visceral response
- CWChris Williamson
Like even-
- CDChris Daw
Of course it is.
- CWChris Williamson
... me as someone, I've never ... The closest I've ever come to a court is when I've picked my mom up from work if her car's been-
- CDChris Daw
Yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... at an MOT. Like, I, I don't have any of my family who've ever been in, you know-
- CDChris Daw
No.
- CWChris Williamson
... I am, I am the, the absolute epitome, uh, avatar for that person, that middle class British person who hasn't got a fucking clue what's going on. And for me, I'm, I'm, as you're talking and as I was reading the book, and these proposals come up, and everyone that's listening may have noticed this as well, I have to check my immediate visceral emotional reaction, because there is something that's been programmed into me to fear the other, right? It's quite tribal-
- CDChris Daw
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... the way that I, oh, no. No, no, keep, keep them away. Don't want them on the street. Don't want them, don't want them out. Like, who's them? Who am I talking about to myself when I say, "Them on the street"? Do you mean those other humans born in the same country as you with the same rights as you that did a thing? Like is that, is that genuinely the way ... So you know, all of this, um, the, the, the proposals that you're putting forward I think upon f- reflection, like with real nuanced thought, they do make sense and land, but there's a challenge as we know, like look at, you know, Trump run 2016 on build that wall and make America great again. The simple visceral response often is actually the one which is able to elicit the, the, the best output, the best outcome from, um, the audience.
- CDChris Daw
Oh, totally. So, so that's, you know, that's the point that I make is that, uh, I, I talk in the book about some, uh, appeal judges that I interviewed, uh, and criminal judges that I interviewed in Alabama. Um, none of them would go on the record, which I, which is perhaps understandable. Um, but they're all elected judges, so they, they're, they're judges, unlike ours, uh, who, who are appointed. Um, they're judges who are elected directly by the public. And I said to one of the courts of appeals judges, "You know, you've, you've given people the death penalty. You've sent people of 18 years old for life without parole for a drug crime. Uh, you, you, you regularly sentence people to 100 years in prison for crimes that, that are not even violent crimes. They might be s- you know, fraudulent or white collar crimes." And I said, "You know, looking at your system, you have these millions of people, 2.3 million people in prison in the States, and you know, th- a- as you know from the book, I call, I call it the city of incarceration. It'd be the fifth-largest city in America if, if you put them all in one place. It's just a c- just think about the numbers, they're absolutely mind-blowing.
- CWChris Williamson
Catastrophic, yeah.
- CDChris Daw
But I said to this judge, I said, "You know, so, so you're doing all of these things, but your, your level of violence and murder in particular is the highest in the world. A- and your rate of imprisonment is the highest in the world."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
So, and he said to me, he turned around and he said, "I know. I know, it's crackers." Or he didn't use that word-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
... but he said, "It's crazy. It's completely crazy." And I said, "Oh, but why do you do it then? I don't understand. You've got your sta- sitting on that bench-"
- CWChris Williamson
You have the power, yeah, you're the guy.
- CDChris Daw
"... as a judge." And he said two things. He said, "The sentences are dictated by guidelines, and I'm not allowed to, to, to, to move from them." The guidelines are set by effectively the legislators, they're politicians who are elected. And he said secondly, "If I came out on television and said, 'I'm in favor of legalizing drugs, reducing the prison population, and starting to have a much more benevolent youth justice system,'" he said, "I'd be out of office in five minutes. No one would vote for me."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDChris Daw
So, so his point was, it's all very well you saying it, and, and he acknowledges that it's all wrong. But if he wants a job, he's got to carry on playing the same old tune. Just as I'm sure many, uh, uh, Southern politicians in the States after slavery was abolished, you know, they didn't want that. They didn't like it, and, and it was kicking and screaming. It was fought by a civil war to get, to get slavery abolished, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Are we gonna have to-
- CDChris Daw
And that was only, only, you know, 150 years ago.
- CWChris Williamson
... are we gonna have to have a civil war to get some justice reform?
- CDChris Daw
Uh, do you know, I, I, I wonder if we keep creeping towards American levels of imprisonment, and we are. We've doubled our own prison population in a generation in Britain. If we keep creeping that way, I wonder whether the British people will actually then look at the increasing rates of murder on the streets, because they, that's what will happen, and start to say, "Hold on a minute. It wasn't like this 20 years ago," and they'd be right. We've doubled our prison population but we've got double the number of murders, 'cause I'll guarantee that's what'll happen. And just then, maybe people w- will start to say to their politicians when it comes to an election ...... what are you actually gonna do about it that works?
- CWChris Williamson
But, yeah, so that's-
- CDChris Daw
'Cause we're sick of our kids being stabbed-
- CWChris Williamson
... that's the thing.
- CDChris Daw
... and shot.
- CWChris Williamson
It's the, that works, that is the important, uh, distinction to make. Because the natural, uneducated, uninformed view is get tougher on crime.
- CDChris Daw
Yeah.
Episode duration: 1:15:25
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