David Penberthy: Proof that most criminals are pretty stupid

The brutal attack on imprisoned drug lord Tony Mokbel exposes the myth that a life of crime is full of riches and glamour, when it’s actually a path for people with half a brain, writes David Penberthy.

A few years ago I had a pleasant and meandering chat with one of our state police commissioners about his favourite crime dramas.

He nominated Breaking Bad as the best of the lot. The six-season television series stars Bryan Cranston as Walter White, a modest chemistry teacher and family man who is diagnosed with lung cancer aged only in his 50s.

White decides he needs to earn the maximum amount of money in the shortest space of time to provide for his family after his death. His solution is to cook crystal meth. With his chemical know-how, he does extremely well in the endeavour.

The commissioner — former SA police boss Gary Burns, by the way — said one of the things that impressed him so much about the series was that it showed how easily a hitherto normal and law-abiding person could drift into a life of crime.

With the exception of the Walter Whites of the world, crime can generally be regarded as the optimistic bludger’s path to affluence.

Walter White went from a modest chemistry teacher and family man...

...To a meth-making kingpin in Breaking Bad.

Unless they are driven by lifelong poverty, or some sudden and desperate set of circumstances, most crims have simply made a mundane decision that the drudgery of a nine to five existence isn’t for them, and decide instead to roll the dice to see if they can get away with doing the smallest amount of work for the maximum commercial return.

I was thinking this week about the hollowness of that promise while reflecting on the life and near-death of Melbourne’s Tony Mokbel.

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The manner by which Mokbel almost met his maker was creatively brutal. He was stabbed repeatedly in the chest and head with “shivs”, homemade prison knives, that had been hidden inside zucchinis at an inmate’s 21st birthday barbecue inside Geelong’s maximum security Barwon Prison.

If anything could bear out the old truism that, in the end, crime doesn’t pay, it was this.

Mokbel’s life exposes the myth that a life of crime is some kind of edgy and glamorous lark with high returns.

It sounds harder than any job, with the constant threat of payback, turf war violence, being ratted out by your confidantes.

Tony Mokbel being attended to by medical staff after an alleged stabbing at Barwon Prison, Victoria. Picture: AAP/Nine News

Mokbel has appeared in no less than 15 court cases, and is currently serving 30 years with a 22-year non parole period for drug trafficking inside the notorious Barwon jail, where poor old Fat Tony found that even the most vigilant wardens in the land couldn’t protect him from a couple of rogue zucchinis.

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If you apply the principles of Freakanomics to the decision to embark on a life of crime, it bolsters the case that at the end of the day, most criminals are pretty stupid. This is because the rate at which most crimes are cleared by our nation’s police has been increasing gradually over the past few decades.

Taking the nation’s biggest state as our sample — and despite the fact that the police forces in states other than NSW have better clear-up rates in many categories of crime — you wonder why anyone would go down the path of criminality at all.

Under the headline “Crime gets more risky”, the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research reported in 2017 that crime clear-up rates had increased across many key offence categories over the previous 10 years.

In 2007, only 16.7 per cent of robberies were cleared (that is, resulted in legal action being taken against a suspected offender) within 90 days. By 2016, the 90 day clear-up rate for robbery had risen to 33.1 per cent; a rise of 16.4 percentage points.

Over the same period, break and enter (non-dwelling) rose from 5.4 to 9.7 per cent, housebreaking rose from 4.5 per cent to 7.8 per cent, and motor vehicle theft from 4.5 to 8.3 per cent.

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The bureau cites the reasons for the improvements as better forensic procedures that enhance the chance of identifying an offender (such as the use of digital technology and phones to track and identify perpetrators), the creation and growth of the National Criminal Investigation DNA database, and an increase in the time available to investigate crime, with fewer crimes being committed but with similar or increased numbers of police.

Underworld figure Tony Mokbel’s (pictured in 2011) was in a critical condition after being stabbed but has since been upgraded to stable. Picture: AAP/Julian Smith

These figures show that the average low-rent crook is facing odds of one in three to (at best) one in 12 of being caught every time they break the aforementioned laws. When you consider that many of these crimes are committed by the same people, their chances of being pinched increase exponentially.

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We all moan about the softness of the courts and/or the laws, but when you think about it, the idea of spending even a week in the clink is enough to put anyone with half a brain off the idea of going down the path of criminality.

At the end of Breaking Bad, in the extraordinary, multi-award winning final episode named “Felina”, Walter White finally admits the motivation for continuing with his criminal ways.

Having insisted throughout the series that he was only ever motivated by a desire to provide for his family, he concedes that like his poor meth-addled victims, he ended up getting hooked.

“I did it for me,” he says. “I liked it. I was good at it. I was really, really alive.”

It all sounds great. But when you consider Walt’s life at the beginning of the show, versus its miserable conclusion, you would have to beg to differ with his half-glass full assessment.

And the next time you’re stuck at an all-day work retreat, with some change consultant writing management inanities on an endless ream of butcher’s paper, comfort yourself with the thought that it sure beats copping a shiv in the side of the head.

@penbo