CRIME AS OPPORTUNITY A NOTE ON DOMESTIC GAS SUICIDE IN BRITAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS

Abstract

** The marked decline of the suicide rate in England and Wales following detoxification of the domestic gas supply during the 1960s and 1970s has been used as evidence to support the case for preventing crime through reduction of criminal opportunities. The apparent absence of displacement to other methods of suicide has been regarded as especially significant. The present study investigates the seem ingly lesser effect of detoxification on the overall suicide rates of Scotland and the Netherlands. While this reduced effect might be indicative of displacement, it is concluded that the fall in suicide resulting from detoxification may have been masked by a rise in other forms of suicide in these countries, coinci dent to, rather than consequent upon, detoxification. Implications for the study of crime displacement and criminal innovation are briefly discussed. The elements of the Home Office's 'situational approach' to crime prevention (Clarke and Mayhew, 1980; Heal and Laycock, 1986) are to be found in 'Crime as Opportun ity' (Mayhew et al., 1976), where it was argued that criminologists had neglected not only the situational determinants of crime but also the associated preventive possibil ities afforded by a reduction of criminal opportunities. This position, labelled 'situ ational control theory' by Downes and Rock (1982), made much play of a study by Hassall and Trethowan (1972) showing that suicides in Birmingham had declined sharply following a reduction in the toxicity of the domestic gas supply—new manufac turing processes dependent upon oil rather than coal were yielding gas with a much smaller percentage of lethal carbon monoxide. Few of the people prevented from poisoning themselves with gas killed themselves in some other way. This seemed especially significant since suicide is usually regarded as more deeply motivated than most crime; crime might therefore be even more greatly affected by reducing opportu nities. The new gas manufacturing technology had been introduced throughout the country from the late 1950s onwards, and a further change came between 1968 and 1977 with the conversion to North Sea gas, which is free of carbon monoxide. It might therefore have been expected that the reduction in suicide first reported for Birming ham would manifest itself more widely, and this indeed proved to be the case: between 1963 and 1975 the national rate of suicide declined by nearly 40 per cent, precisely in step with the decline in gas toxicity (Kreitman, 1976; Low et al., 1981; Kreitman