Book excerpt: Crime Pays are the reflections of a Justice of the Peace who, having spent 16 years on the front line of criminal justice, is not slow in courting controversy. Mike Welham’s views are critical and damning of government failures. As a magistrate he believes that the Human Rights Act, a necessary law drawn up to deal with abuses by despot dictators, has been highjacked to become a criminals’ charter. The outcome is that crime has evolved to an extent that there is virtually no compassion or support for victims. Crime Pays provides a flavour, sometimes humorous, other times frustrating, of cases which Mike has sat on and demonstrates the impact that crime has on us all. He shows how the welfare state has failed and produced a broken society and he argues, with examples, that broken homes, unemployment, political correctness and uncontrolled mass immigration have all contributed to the increase in crime. Mike looks at serious crimes and devotes a section of Crime Pays to the failure of punishment and rehabilitation and a focus on what he terms, ‘Mrs. Windsor’s Hotels’, the prisons and the convicts who appear to run them, while also looking at the emotive and controversial issue of the repeated calls for the reintroduction of capital and corporal punishments. There are few books that openly challenge the criminal justice system from an insider’s perspective. Crime Pays is therefore a unique insight into a Justice of the Peace’s view on the real impact crime is having on society.