来源：《卫报》
刊登日期：2021年4月22日
"Why do people get involved in crime and serious crime? It’s because the opportunities to make money elsewhere aren’t there for them." Such opinions are frequently derided as the fancies of a liberal left disconnected from the impact of law-breaking on victims’ lives. But these are the words of Andy Cooke, a police chief not known for his softness. If he was given a budget of £5bn to tackle crime, he said, he would spend £4bn of it on reducing poverty and “levelling up”.
“为什么人们会卷入犯罪？这是因为他们在其他方面没有赚钱的机会。”这些观点经常被嘲笑为自由左派的幻想，与犯罪行为对受害者生活的影响脱节。但这是安迪·库克的话，一位不以温和著称的警察局长。他表示，如果给他50亿英镑的预算用于打击犯罪，他将把其中的40亿英镑用于减少贫困和缩小贫富差距。
His argument for increased spending on poverty reduction places him among policing’s progressives. But while such views may not be the norm among his colleagues, nor are they unique. In 2018, Patricia Gallan, then a senior figure in the Metropolitan police, made strikingly similar comments about people who feel they “do not have a stake” in society. Neil Basu, Britain’s top counter-terrorism officer, has said that social mobility and education and training improvements are crucial tools in the battle against extremism. In fact, it would be strange if senior police figures did not acknowledge these links. It is more than a decade, after all, since Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett published The Spirit Level, which drew together large quantities of epidemiological data to demonstrate the damaging effects of inequality on societies. High levels of crime and violence were shown to be prominent among them.
他主张增加扶贫开支，这使他跻身于警务界的进步人士之列。尽管这样的观点在他的同事中可能不是常态，但也不是独一无二的。2018年，时任伦敦警察局高级官员的帕特里夏·加兰针对那些认为自己前途无望的人发表了惊人相似的评论。英国最高反恐官员尼尔巴苏曾表示，提高社会流动性、改善教育和培训是打击极端主义的关键手段。事实上，如果警方高层人士不承认这些联系，那会很奇怪。毕竟，理查德·威尔金森和凯特·皮克特发表《精神水平》已经有十多年了，这本书汇集了大量流行病学数据，以证明不平等对社会的破坏性影响。高犯罪率和暴力行为在其中表现突出。
Whether ministers will pay attention to this latest warning is doubtful. But for now, Mr Cooke and others are right to be worried about the corrosive effects, particularly on the young, of what many perceive to be narrowing life chances.
内阁部长们是否会注意到这一最新警告值得怀疑。但就目前而言，库克先生和其他人的担心是正确的，许多人意识到人生机遇越来越少，这具有破坏效应，特别是对年轻人。