3052: Crime
It may take the larger part of the next 1,000 years to do
so, but in that time society will have a far better attitude about what is a
crime and what is not. Acts and event that are today a crime will be better
thought of as "nobody's business" or as an unfortunate circumstance
that deserves treatment and remedy rather than summary incarceration.
In very low density population areas, simple exile could
suffice as punishment fitting a crime. However, in those days and regions, worshiping
the wrong god or even the right god in the wrong way was a crime worthy of
death. Worshiping no god at all was the worst.
In societies where there was limited resources to maintain a
convicted felon in a cage, they developed the paradigm of extremity amputation
as both a marker of ones status as a criminal and as a practical limiting of
ones ability to be a recidivist.
A large portion of the laws of the land, any land, are
formed and enforced to seat power in an elite group of people. All churches of
the adolescent faiths exercise that power over the population. They determine
what a crime is and what the punishment shall be many times in a completely
arbitrary fashion. For instance the very same act by two people of widely
different social levels will be treated differently. One might receive a fine
while the other is incarcerated for a number of years.
During the run up to the 3rd Millennium, acts and event that
are deemed crimes and worthy of punishment will be greatly reduced. While in
some arcane times and locations, selling spray paint on a Sunday was a crime.
It was deemed so because a competing paint seller did not want to remain open
on his Sabbath. Even in the 21st Century many states prohibit the sale of
alcohol on Sundays. It remains a crime.
As our attitudes evolve, the possession off drugs that some
people use for recreational purposes will drop out of the list of substances
that can get a person incarcerated for merely possession. There will be a
two-fold reason behind this. First there will be no morality reason for
curtailing their use and there will be no value in prosecuting and housing
offenders. More specifically, no one will profit from the former crime either
by being employed to apprehend, prosecute and incarcerate the possessor.
Similarly, the price of purchase will be market driven rather than held
artificially high such that someone benefits from the high price. Petty crimes will not be necessary when an
addicting substance becomes an inexpensive product rather than a major revenue
source for the manufacturers and distributers.
All drug use will be a public health matter rather than a
judicial one. No one will have to steal or assault another to get the money to
assuage their addiction. If they want treatment, they can get it. Otherwise
they will be free to kill themselves with their addictions.
The vast majority of people do not steal because they have
less than someone else. They steal when they do not have enough of food,
shelter, comforts and in the case of addictions not enough of the addicting
substance. Solving the resource allocation puzzle will reduce a significant
amount of petty crime and simple assaults.
Alcohol doesn't cause people to exhibit bad behaviors rather
it lowers ones self-control to release the angers and the antisocial attitudes
that are already in the person and are being suppressed until the alcohol
changes the game. Most antisocial behaviors are learned at an early age.
Parents or the absence of parents shape how a child will develop. We create our
own monsters by how we treat children. They endure mistreatment then pass it
along to their own children. It is very difficult to break that chain of
abuser-abuse without separating the children at a very early age from the
abuse. The children must be relocated to
a parental environment where abuse will not continue.
In those 1,000 years of change, we will (must) learn to
identify the abuser environments early and break the cycle.
Partner abuse is also a crime. Striking a partner, a parent
or a child is an assault that is a learned behavior. Psychological abuse is
also learned. Misogynic behaviors are also learned either from parents,
relatives and even other people in the neighborhood, including other children.
Once the conditions that propagate abusive relationships are better understood
and identified, the crime level associated with the behaviors will also be
mitigated.
Much of the domestic violence that exists up through the
21st Century is associated with job stress, lack of sufficient incomes, and
unrealistic expectations of what the partner is supposed to do. Some of those
expectations are derived from religious texts that have been references over
and over again. With those influences minimized, so will be the behavioral
crimes of abuse and domestic violence. When a person who is today a vulnerable
partner and has nowhere to go and no way to subsist, is able to get out and
stay away on his or her own, then there will be far fewer intransigent
circumstances.
Product advertising in the 21st Century is a process of
isolating consumers, telling them that they are inadequate by showing to them
people who are perfect, and creating in them an anxiety that they are missing
out and will never catch up. They show a person wearing a $900 jacket, $300 footwear
and how sexy they seem to the opposite sex.
Those who can afford the products buy them. Those who cannot buy them
steal them from someone who has or they buy cheap knockoff copies (actually two
crimes in one). In that distant future, there will be no such expensive
clothing and accessories therefore no need to mug someone and steal.
The sheer numbers of possible buyers will make the per unit
profit rates much lower. For instance selling a single song file for 99ȼ to
1/10 of the US population today generates $31 million dollars FOR JUST ONE
SONG. When the US population is 600 to 1000 million, the royalties would
generate $60 to $100 million at the same ratios. Of course, this assumes that
people will care to buy access to individual songs after the passage of 1,000
year from now.
Pirating music for one's private collection of music will
certainly be non-existent in that far away day. The "must have"
recordings like we have today will be so clique by then.
Driving while intoxicated will be impossible with
automobiles that routinely navigate themselves. Manual driving will be
monitored by internal control systems so as to take over when the inebriated
driver makes moves that are contrary to acceptable parameters. No need for it
to be a crime to drive intoxicated when you just won't be able to do it.
With the reduction of things that ARE crimes and the
economic inequities that foster crimes of desperation, will come a lessening of
the fears and hatreds of people who are not exactly like ourselves. Those
divisional attitudes will lessen the personal violence that has been a hallmark
up through this 21st Century. While it
will take a very long time to reign in 300 million handguns of America, gun
ownership in 3052 will be nearly non-existent.
Suspects of trivial crimes will not need to be subdued and
brutalized. They won't feel it necessary to carry a gun to protect themselves
from other petty crime, to commit a crime or attempt to not be arrested for a
crime. Police will not need to shoot fleeing suspects when they already know
exactly who they are and can pick them up at any later time.
The whole idea that one can steal a piece of art supposes
that someone wants to buy it at a price that the thief, fence and other intermediaries
need to make it worth the effort. The buying selling of art also supposes that
someone later on will pay an even higher price the next time the art is offered
at auction. At some point that entire concept breaks down.
The same goes for gems and jewelry. The only reason a man
would spend $4,000 for an engagement ring is that the woman he want to marry
has been taught the message that you get a big stone or the whole thing is off.
She is taught to swoon over a bit of crystalline carbon. This is an advertising
and gem industry coup to get people to spend great sums on object that will
never return the purchase price, ever. In 3052, people will be wiser than today
and not want such expensive frivolous trinkets and they just won't have the
funds to spend on them. With few people wanting this jewelry there will be few
people to steal from or steal for.
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