British Ex-Criminals Told Us What They Think of the EU Referendum

Away from TACs and quotas and immigration and weird failed campaign concerts, there's been another topic the teams on either side of the EU referendum have enjoyed rowing about: crime.

Vote Leave reckon that remaining in the EU is tantamount to inviting every single dodgy bastard ever born on that there mainland to the UK, allowing them to pick our pockets and install sophisticated card-scanning technology on all of our innocent cash points. Remain, however, believe that a vote to leave the EU would result in criminals and terrorists "rejoicing", as it would supposedly become much harder for law enforcement in different countries to collaborate on cases.

This is, of course, all pretty speculative and scaremonger-y, which isn't helpful in the slightest. So I thought of something potentially more useful: asking former criminals who've lived in Europe for their opinions on a possible Brexit, why they chose the locations they chose as bases for committing crime and if they were motivated by any of the factors the anti-EU brigade say will result in Britain being swamped with ne'er-do-wells.

Former fraudster, drug dealer and thief Stuart Campbell has lived in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Frankfurt and Ibiza. Glaswegian ex-villain Mark Dempster was based in Amsterdam and Marbella during his time as a drug smuggler and dealer. Former jewellery thief and ecstasy smuggler Mark Blaney lived in Amsterdam during his criminal days. And, finally, Steve Roufy, who was in a crew that carried out robberies on banks and jewellers, was also based in Amsterdam. Here's what they had to say.

VICE: What's your overall opinion on the EU referendum? Are you in or out?
Stuart Campbell: I don't usually vote, but there are so many foreign criminals and people who are claiming benefits in Britain now that I think I'm probably going to vote "out", and also vote for UKIP at the next election. I get on with anyone, whether they're black, white, gay, whatever, so I'm not being racist when I say there are too many Europeans here. I'm saying it because it's putting a strain on our housing and benefits system.

Steve Roufy: I couldn't comment on the Brexit overall, because it's difficult to say what the effect would be, but in terms of foreign criminals coming here, the fact that Britain's in the EU definitely makes it worse.

Mark Dempster: There are strong arguments both for and against the Brexit, and it's quite a complicated issue. I'm more on the side of leaving, though, as the costs of EU membership seem to outweigh the benefits.

Mark Blaney: I don't think we should have ever joined the EU in the first place. We're an island and should be able to make our own laws rather than allowing Europe to make them for us. We should leave the EU and restart the Commonwealth. That way, we wouldn't have to take orders from Germany and the other nations that control the EU.

What was your main motivation for living in the locations that you chose when you were involved in crime in Europe?
Campbell: Mainland Europe was easier to graft [commit crime in] than Britain back then because they had fewer security measures in place. Being on the mainland also gave me easy access to rich countries like Switzerland that were filled with money and tom [jewellery]. I lived in Ibiza 'cause of the music and the E thing there.

Roufy: We were based in Amsterdam because it was near the other countries in Europe that we wanted to go to.

Dempster: I chose Amsterdam because there were a lot of drugs there, which made it a suitable location for me at that stage in my life. The authorities there also had a very liberal stance on crime. I was attracted to Marbella because it's a crime hotspot. Holland and Spain were also easy nations to get drugs into, so that was also a major factor in my decision.

Blaney: You could smoke weed in Amsterdam, and it was also a base for lots of other British criminals.

Do you think being in the EU makes it easier for foreign criminals to enter the UK?
Campbell: Yeah, it does, because Romanian grafters [career criminals] can travel here freely. Turkey's attempts to gain EU membership are also a bit concerning. The Turkish Old Bill punish criminals so severely that the grafters there would no doubt flock here in the thousands in search of a softer touch if they got the chance. I've spent quite a bit of time in Turkey and seen firsthand what the police there do to criminals. There's a strong motivation for Turkish criminals to go on the graft [commit crime] in places like Britain that are more arsed about human rights.

Roufy: I'd say being in the EU makes it easier for criminals to pass through borders. Back in the day, there was a type of passport called a British Visitor's Passport that you could change every year. We'd abuse the fact that you could get a new one issued so often and constantly change our passports, getting different names put on them each time. It was easier to use a false name back then as well. That meant that the authorities couldn't get onto the fact we'd got previous convictions, and we could get into the countries we wanted to graft in.

If they'd kept those going, the EU probably wouldn't make much difference in terms of criminals travelling from one European country to the next, but they eventually got rid of them. Now that you've got to wait ages to get a new passport, the EU has definitely resulted in more criminals from other European countries travelling to the UK to do crime. You've got Bulgarians and Romanians building big mansions back home with cash they earn here. They can make money from our benefits system and also get it from picking pockets and doing cash-point scams.

Blaney: We seem to get the scum from some countries, but don't get me wrong: we've got some good immigrants here as well. The Polish helped us win the Second World War, so I like them. Some people try to brand anyone who is anti-EU as racist or prejudiced against Muslims, but that's not the case with me. I've had a lot of Muslim friends in the past. My main reason for wanting out is that the UK should be independent from all other nations.

Dempster: Yes, [it makes it easier for foreign criminals] because it makes travel within Europe significantly easier.

Do you think leaving the EU would make it harder to extradite or deport criminals?
Campbell: Not really, because countries would come up with other agreements. They can extradite people from countries that aren't in the EU at the moment, so it wouldn't make much difference.

Roufy: Possibly, yeah.

Dempster: Maybe, as I'd expect there would be less communication between the countries within Europe.

Blaney: A lot of the time, European criminals who come to the UK end up standing trial in England when they're caught rather than being deported straight back to their own countries. In my opinion, that definitely shouldn't be the case.

What's your take on whether or not leaving the EU would harm cooperation between different European countries when it comes to fighting crime?
Campbell: They could form other agreements that made cooperating to fight crime easier.

Roufy: It might make it a bit more difficult for them to work together.

Dempster: It's got the potential to negatively impact the relationships between the various different police forces within Europe.

Blaney: Back when I was travelling from country to country doing crime, Interpol did a pretty good job of working together to catch international criminals, and they're nothing to do with the EU.

Mark Dempster now works as a drug counsellor and has released a book about his time as a drug smuggler.

@Nickchesterv

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