Mr. Whitehead asks for details of the avenues by which rich men can escape hanging when poor men can’t. The answer should immediately occur to him. Wealth can purchase medical testimony of useful kinds to impress judge and jury; it can fetch witnesses from all over the world; it can provide a barrage of the most skilful barristers and solicitors with assistants to hunt up records and precedents; it can also buy witnesses. There is also the general fact Mr. Whitehead overlooks—the undiscovered crimes committed by the wealthy which they can commit because they are wealthy, and which do not figure in crime statistics. (, . , )
It is a waste of time for Mr. Whitehead to blindly repeat the same contentions without meeting the arguments we have put against them. We have given ample evidence to show that crime in general can be explained by the social environment, and modern crime by the capitalist environment in which we live.
(From a reply to a letter, Socialist Standard, April 1945)
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