29 murderers killed again in past decade said the headline.
Pardon?
No, it cannot mean that the murderers were killed for a second time – we don’t even hang them once these days.
Does it mean that the number of murderers who were killed, or who killed on more than one occasion, was the same as it was in the preceding decade?
No. Read the article & you will find that it means that, over the last 10 years, 29 murderers who had been let out of prison on licence took advantage of their freedom to kill again.
We hear quite a lot about killings by people who have been discharged from psychiatric care (or not even admitted when they say they need to be) but I don’t think that all these prison-release cases make it to the national news agenda. Makes me wonder how many of the repeats were regarded as merely ‘routine murders.’ On the other hand, at only three a year perhaps we don’t remember them even when they are reported, precisely because they are rare, even though rare usually equals newsworth.
Since the total number of murder victims is only about a dozen a week on average in the whole of England & Wales, you might expect that all would be newsworthy. But most of them are men, as are their murderers. Probably many of the circumstances bear a depressing familiarity, perhaps falling into the category of ‘six of one, half dozen of the other’ or ‘will not be greatly missed’. It would be interesting to see comparable figures of reported crimes based on national media rather than police sources.
Media reports tend to produce a different perception of the risks we face as individuals in other important ways. Women may think they are less safe when out alone, but home may in fact be the most dangerous place, since if you are murdered it is fifty/fifty that it is at the hands of a current or former partner. Not that this fact conclusively proves the contention. What is much more likely to be true is that the murder of a ‘respectable’ woman by a stranger is much more likely to attract lurid headlines.
Since the way that the word killed is used was on my mind, I noticed the way in which Roger McGough told us on this week’s Poetry Please that Randall Jarrell was 'killed by a car' in 1965 & that there was speculation that 'he took his own life'. Here there is real confusion about agency; although it is quite common - & perfectly allowable – to speak of someone being killed by an inanimate object which is incapable of forming an intention to inflict such damage, we may suspect that human negligence or even intent lies behind the event. Someone failed to maintain the wall that collapsed, or took their eyes off the road or, in the case of the depressed poet, deliberately walked in front of the car.
In this country there seems to be a growing belief that the driver should be prosecuted or held to account in every case where someone is killed ‘by a car’. In one sense this is odd, because deaths in road accidents are now much rarer than they used to be. This is not an uncommon trajectory however; at first we are excited by the new technology, envious of those who can afford it, anxious to experience its benefits for ourselves. Deaths are regrettable, but part of the price of progress: collateral damage.
Lessons are learned from the accidents, new safety measures introduced. We all learn, gradually & collectively, how to behave in the midst of traffic, whether our role is that of driver, passenger, pedestrian or cyclist. And society starts to make plain its disapproval of drivers who are careless or cavalier – punishment is inflicted, there is less tolerance of ‘human error.’
The more I think of it however, the more I think that road vehicles powered by the internal combustion engine have probably, on balance, done more to save lives than to end them prematurely, not least by ensuring that those who are sick or injured (whatever the cause), get appropriate medical help as quickly as possible, within the magic hour.
So now – because we’re never happy unless we have something to complain about – we can worry about what we are doing to the climate with our cars instead.
