The Conspiracy Theorist Read Online Free PDF Page A

called ‘Community Safety’.   I am sure there is a department in
the Home Office that comes up with new names for old failures.   If they are really worried they put the
‘P’ word next to whatever the new initiative is.   The ‘P’ word means it is someone else’s fault.   Society
is to blame , as Monty Python once said, so
we will be charging them too .   So the conference where Reuben Symonds spoke, all those years ago, was
on the subject of Community Safety Partnerships.  
    Reuben had been an impressive
speaker.   Tall, thin, ebony black,
with the healthy amber glow of an athlete, and greying peppercorn hair cut
close to the head.   He began by
telling his story—always a good opener at such gatherings—and not
without emotion in his case.   He stressed
how his criminal actions had affected those around him: his brothers, sisters,
cousins, and his mother (breaking into tears at this point).   It was something he called ‘the ripple
effect’: how if you did one bad thing, it was shown to affect twelve other
people in your life.  
    It was a hot day.   One of the coppers behind me—a
nascent Richie by the sound of him—had whispered to his mate that he
could ‘just do with a raspberry ripple’.   I had turned and made a note of the man’s number—he was in uniform
fortunately—and that had sufficed to keep him quiet for the rest of the
talk.  
    Everyone
hates you at the Yard, Becket.
    The event had been in the British
Library, not far from the Alconbury Estate but culturally on another
planet.   Symonds talked about how he
had passed Pentonville on the way there that day.   He had even looked up at the cell he used to be in.   He described the view and the desire to
be in the normal world outside and the fact that there were people just like
him there now looking out.   He went
on to outline his recidivism, the inability to keep down a job, and the easy
route of slipping back into crime.  
    On his second stretch (this time for
armed robbery), he was diagnosed with dyslexia and he began to understand why he
had felt frustrated at school, his sense of anger and resentment at not being
able to succeed.   However Reuben Symonds
was not one for using this as an excuse—in his book there was no excuse
for criminal behaviour—and he decided to pursue what he called his ‘redemption’.   The Prisoners’ Education Trust talked
to him.   He got help with his
reading.   He described how he got
the learning bug, going from one course to another, to doing his ‘A’ levels, to
taking a degree in English Literature with the Open University.   He won a national adult learner of the
year award and, on release, volunteered at his local community centre in
Tottenham.   The housing association
saw his talents and employed him.   He
had helped with something called the Reduced Crime Initiative and crime had
duly seen a reduction.   He had been visited there by the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister,
the London Mayor, and even the Prince of Wales, who gamely attempted to compose
a few lines of rap poetry .   A number of celebrities visited—musicians, athletes,
footballers—and not all of them black.  
    Reuben Symonds had clearly gone onto
better things since.   He was now
the Community Coordinator at the Alconbury.   And it was quite a community to coordinate.

 
    I
was stubbing out my cigarette as Symonds turned the corner of Coolidge Court
and walked in my direction.   He was accompanied on either side by two men—one black, one
white—who looked like they spent a considerable amount of their leisure
time lifting weights .   They
were all dressed in black t-shirts.   Reuben Symonds wore black shorts and no socks.   It looked odd that he also carried a briefcase.   His companions carried nothing but
their arms, but they looked heavy enough.   All three were staring at me like they could not quite comprehend my
existence.
    ‘I heard I had a visitor,’ Symonds
said.   ‘But