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Article: Open season; Kidnapping; A kidnapping boom.(measures taken to reduce kidnappings and reasons for increase)(Britain)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- February 10, 2001
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THE sorts of people generally assumed to be susceptible to kidnapping are aristocratic heiresses and the relatives of football stars; or unlucky business types snatched to jungle hideouts by foreign guerrillas. But in Britain, the business of kidnapping is less glamorous and more democratic. It is also booming: in London, where the crime is concentrated, the number of kidnappings investigated by the police has risen 16-fold in three years (see chart). Last month, London's Metropolitan Police dealt with 11 cases of kidnapping, more than it encountered in the whole of 1998.
Two sorts of victims largely account for this explosion. One is the illegal immigrant, ...