Theodore Dalrymple reviews A Brief History of Crime by Peter Hitchens Not long ago, I was talking to a policeman who was on the verge of retirement. He was pleased to leave the force, he said, because it had not only become unbearably bureaucratic, but morally and intellectually corrupt. Chief constables were now politicians and spin-doctors, not policemen; policing was more a matter of public relations than of enforcing the law. "In the old days", he added wistfully, "it was different. We were nice to the nice people and nasty to the nasty people." Under our brave new dispensation, a...