That's fucking stupid

Posts Tagged ‘Crime’

From today’s news headlines:

OMG KIDS TAKING MORE DRUGS. EVERYBODY IS ALARMED!!!

Let’s take a look at that a bit more closely, shall we? Here’s the text from the actual report:

Police recorded drug offences increased by six per cent compared with 2007/08, following an increase of 18 per cent between 2006/07 and 2007/08. Increases in recent years have been largely attributable to increases in the recording of possession of cannabis offences… In 2008/09 possession of cannabis increased by six per cent compared with 2007/08. This increase continues an upward trend in recent years, with possession of cannabis offences recorded by the police rising by 90 per cent since 2004/05. This rise has been largely associated with the increased use of powers to issue cannabis warnings.

and

The [British Crime Survey] is also used to monitor trends in drug use and the figures are published annually. The BCS shows that overall illicit drug use among 16 to 59 year olds decreased from 11.1 per cent in 1996 to 9.3 per cent in 2007/08 and it is now at its lowest level since the BCS started measurement. This decrease is mainly due to successive declines in use of cannabis since 2003/04… This suggests the increase seen in recent years in police recorded drug offences is likely to be due to increase in police activity rather than in drug use.

Just thought I should highlight that. Once again: usage hasn’t risen: police have just been reporting it more.

Prostitution is likely to be criminalised because there is a victim right? After all, the mandate of the government when criminalising stuff is to halt behaviour that impacts on others in a negative way, right? Some stuff like murder is obvious, the victim is the person who is murdered. Some stuff like drunk driving is a preventative thing because it stops accidents from happening and it stops people from becoming victims. And there are some crimes which exist solely to cut down on self-inflicted injury which cost the tax payer (thanks to the wonders of the NHS) and the state as a whole some serious cash.

In the case of prostitution it’s hard to find the victim though, it’s like a giant game of Where’s Wally, in which Wally fails to make an appearance. Let’s go through the interested parties:

The Tom

The tom is making good money and in most cases chooses to be in the trade. The hours are good and the pay is good too. Working the streets is a lot less pleasant than working in a brothel where you may have a pimp or a madam taking their cut but either way the flexibility of being your own boss has its advantages. There is a cost to social capital if your job is to be a ho’ but that is made up by the good wages.

The Pimp

The pimp certainly isn’t the victim: he’s taking a cut of the action in return for fixing up the tricks. Some pimps offer protection as well, but in general the arrangement is that they fix up the deals which means the toms don’t have to find their own trade.

The Johns

The johns are the nearest thing to a victim; you could almost argue that they are the victim, but then they have a choice in the matter. Either way they want a service and they are prepared to pay for it. At typical European rates, Paul McCartney could have got laid every night of his life for considerably less than it cost to get rid of that batshit insane Mills woman (€1.2m assuming he was up for it 7 days a week for the whole of the usual three score years and ten compared to about €25m which it cost him to marry and then divorce the mad slag with the missing limbs).

Society as a whole

Hmmm. Not sure how they are the victim here. At the moment the toms don’t pay tax; if they did then it would be hard to claim that society would be suffering. There are health implications to prostitution but legalised and licensed prostitution means that health and hygiene rules can be imposed to ensure that everyone goes about their business in a safe way.

I’ve skipped over the one excuse that governments around the world use time and time again: by criminalising prostitution the government is protecting the innocent girls who get forced into a life of prostitution by their exploiting pimps. That’s just bullshit. It’s like saying that all work should be banned because a few employers don’t pay minimum wage. If prostitution were legalised and licensed then there would be a line drawn between those who want to make good money on their backs, and those who are trafficked and working as illegally trafficked immigrants. The government could pay for the regulation because those who want to work in the sex trade would be tax payers and the health concerns could be tackled by introducing health and hygiene rules for licensed hookers.

Combine this with harsher penalties for johns using unlicensed toms and the demand for illegally traded women dries up, thus forcing the traffickers out of business. Of course the government isn’t going to do this because they are obsessed with the idea that all toms are victims of exploitation, after all, who would choose that life?

Quite a few it would seem.

A fortune cookie once said:

Rules are for the guidance of the wise and the blind allegiance of fools.

The message behind the proverb is that rules are there to show people what generally is and is not acceptable but they are fallable so should not be seen as inflexible boundries. Unfortunately, where rules and laws fall down is when dealing with people who follow rules too closely and use them for their own means.

Most civilised societies have laws which prohibit murder but most countries also have a pretty narrow definition of murder and an often less serious crime of manslaughter. Murder is defined as the taking of life with malice aforethought, or with the intention of doing it. If I cause an accident which kills someone then that would be manslaughter but if I set out to kill someone then that would be murder. Proving the intent is the hard part and often means that prosecutors settle for manslaughter charges rather than murder because they are easier to prove. Unfortunately this puts us in a situation where occasionally accidental deaths are convicted as murder because the guilty party cannot prove it was accidental and also means that a clever murderer will be able to make the death seem either accidental or claim that it was accidental in order to get a reduced sentence.

Pedophiles can get their kicks just by being in the audience at a school swimming gala while parents are unable to take photos of their own kids, terrorists find new and interesting ways of causing mayhem while regular travellers get their duty free booze confiscated because it breaks the 100ml rule and copyright or patent laws are used by big corporations to attack the small creative groups that the laws were designed to protect.

The legal system has always had loop holes but the judiciary were selected for their strong moral judgement and ability to make decisions based on the evidence provided. Some of these decisions were subjective and occasionally errors of judgement happened. In an effort to prevent this from happening we, as a society, have built greater and greater layers of complexity to the legal system and filled the statute books with more and more laws which are designed to stipulate exactly what can and can’t be done in any given situation. The problem with closing loop holes is that for every one you close, many more open up. The idea of ‘rights’ is great however they must be evenly applied and are most often used by the malicious in order to escape or evade punishment.

A few years ago there was a story going around that a homeowner was sued by a burglar who had slipped while breaking in. It caused much outrage and was seen as a poster boy example for the ‘political correctness gone mad’ that the Daily Mail is keen to womble on about. In an ideal world this case (if it indeed existed) would have been thrown out by the courts for contravening the basic ideals of common sense and personal responsibility…

But what if it had? If a homeowner is allowed not liable for injury if the other party is trespassing then it might be wise to make sure that you have written invitations from the unscrupulous householders you may visit; they may exploit the loophole if you injure yourself at theirs by claiming you were trespassing. If a burglar injured himself while stealing from you he might think it wise to claim that you deliberately injured him, thus putting you in a riskier position.

Legislating for every eventuality is a process which leads inevitably towards totalitarianism and cannot be achieved without it, we are already happily skipping down that path and it would take a significant reverse in public policy to take us back to the point where judges were trusted to make decisions and policemen could use their discretion, the golden era that the “BBC Have your say” gang wistfully recall.

Media responsibility is pretty important if we want to steer away from a totalitiarian Britain. Newspapers and TV channels competing for attention are prone to blowing unusual events out of proportion. News coverage brings the unusual to the public attention. A few million people going to work is unremarkable yet a few million people trapped at home because of snow is unusual and worthy of news. All too often the remarkable events that capture the public imagination fuel massive changes in policy and legislation which are disproportionate to the original and improbably events.

In short, don’t worry about the little things that the papers report. It’s the stuff they don’t report that is happening every day in every city all around the country. Legislating for the little stuff just takes our eyes off the big stuff or gives the perpetrators new loopholes to use to their advantage.

It seems that a lot of people live in constant fear of being attacked because the police keep insisting that kids are carrying knives and are ready to stab us as we walk home at night. Of course by telling everyone that the streets are crawling with maniac wielding knives they are in fact encouraging other pussies who fearful to carry some form of blade themselves.

This doesn’t seem to be the case though because last night I was “mugged” by someone who was too stuipid to realise that a knife would have helped him relieve me of my wallet. As it happened he endured a little clip round the ear and we both went about our busiess, despite his threats to ‘fuck me up’. Sure there are some kids who are too pussy to go out without a blade but there are always wimps who hide behind tools because they lack the confidence to deal with situations on their own, just as there are a few kids out there who know they can’t win a fight one-on-one and hang about in packs like feral animals. Rather than telling kids not to carry knives while glamorizing them in the media and spreading fear, let’s just point out that although some kids who are sniveling little runts may feel they need to  carry because it makes them feel more of a man, anyone with a pair of cahones worth a damn doesn’t need a knife.

The guy that tried to mug me last night was a bit of a dumbass for trying it on with someone twice his size but I have a certain amount of respect for him because at least he took a beating like a man and wasn’t a complete pussy who needed to carry a tool.

Hey there, kids. The ban on “extreme pornography” in the UK came into force on Monday. Here’s a prediction:

And remember, the pictures only need to be “realistic”, not “real”, to count as offensive!

UPDATE: OK then. Here’s a fuller view. You see, this whole thing came about because someone who caused a violent sex crime was also found to have had pictures of acts of violent sexual behaviour on his computer (it was never clarified if these were pictures of real acts or merely fantastic depictions).

Ergo, the pictures were the cause of the crime. Ergo, if he hadn’t owned the pictures he wouldn’t have caused the crime. QED.

No.

You see there are two points worth mentioning here:

1. an adult who causes a violent sex crime is going to be the type of person who will have done that whether or not they have access to picture of it. Millions of people watch horror films, but we don’t go around with hockey masks and chainsaws.
2. this particular act made it into the news. The news, my friends, is all about unlikely things. Things that shock or surprise us. Things that rarely happen. If it were a common case, then we wouldn’t hear about it on the news. Far more people get mugged or swindled or beaten up than are victims of violent sex crime. The spark for this whole sorry affair was one case of a violent sex crime. Not a spate of crimes, not a nationwide outbreak, just one crime.

Now surely, given the widespread availability of porn, the widespread availability of S&M porn, and the fairly large and active S&M community in the UK, wouldn’t we expect far more cases than this? Wouldn’t there be a correlation between violent porn ownership and violent crimes?

Now go away and leave me and my porn alone.

A propos the news, it is for reason (2) of course that we’re not allowed to take a pair of tweezers onboard an aircraft yet they give us a knife and fork with our in-flight meal.