Who Killed Creativity?: ...And How Do We Get It Back?

Chapter 3: Where has creativity died?

Probing the possible murder sites

Imagine you’re walking towards a playground park bench to eat your lunch. Suddenly your phone buzzes with a secret ring tone, alerting you to the fact that you are about to sit next to a registered sex offender, or maybe even a murderer. This is not a scenario from a horror or science fiction movie. The technology has been around for a while. It’s already possible to download an iPhone/android app that tells you how many criminals there are within a set radius of where you are. Tested recently at one city location to cover a designated area, it detected two Vs (violent criminals), four Ts (people convicted of theft/robbery), 50 Ms (those convicted of multiple crimes) and about 12 Os (people with traffic offences or other legal black marks against their name). This could make you feel quite paranoid. What are all these criminals up to? One blogger commented, ‘After living here nearly 15 years I’m probably going to start locking my door at night … Good heavens! My city is overrun with rapists and paedophiles. I’ve got to stop looking at this map!’

In the UK a group called Charity Crime Stoppers has compiled a map of ‘hotspots’ where Britain’s most hardened criminals live. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the busy cities are the top hotspots. According to shadow home secretary Chris Grayling, ‘The most persistent offenders often come from the most challenging and deprived areas of our biggest cities. It underlines how ...