Criminal Careers

Oh RTE and their little procedural idiosyncrasies, especially when it comes to courts coverage. We have spoken here before about the phenomenon RTE created whereby the victim of a crime can only be named “locally”. Slotting in alongside that one is the insistence on giving us the occupation of the individual in the dock. The defendant is invariably unemployed when violence is involved. It is deemed important that we know this, probably to help us develop a more rounded impression of the squalor that attends this person’s existence.