The honest politician's guide to crime control

(c) Criminonymous

To lead us gently into the weekend, here is another offering from Criminonymous. 

The truth is that almost all adults have, at some time in their lives

Committed criminal acts

And it is those who have not who are abnormal

Almost all the acts which are defined as criminal in our society

Have at some time in some society been tolerated

And even socially approved

The line between legitimate and illegitimate means of acquiring property

Is both arbitrary and difficult to define precisely

There are wide differences between states

In regard to what sexual behaviour is criminal

And considerable variation in the same state

At different historical periods

There is no evidence

That the bulk of criminal behaviour

Is the result of some pathological, mental or somatic condition

Which distinguishes criminals in general

From non-criminals

Bad person

(c) Criminonymous

In this latest piece, Criminonymous posits that any definition of 'crime' is contingent upon time and place. None of us are wholly innocent. Does imprisonment, and its associated sanctions, work?

There are people who break into other people’s homes

People who trespass on private land because they want to roam

A drunken person might steal a phone and a garden gnome

And then there’s couples whose love is a crime and a sin

People whose political views are deemed worthy of prison

People who transgress to achieve an end they were taught was legitimate

What you consider deviant depends on what you see as normal

What you see as bad depends on your experience of sorrow

The norms we adhere to shift like the continents

Our priorities change, but no one keeps on top of it

We all want safety, irrespective of our stance

But the people in the jails are mostly there by chance

We don’t fight crime; we define crime

We respond when we can, but for the majority of offences

There’s no such thing as a plan

That can effectively stem all the illicit demand

We blame cops too for the culture in which they live

Like with any gang culture, recruits may be of a certain creed

But to reintegrate, our forgiveness is what they need

Police are as manipulated as everyone else

All mental health is suspect in and of itself

People are fragile

Liable to influence by their surroundings, like the hopeless in prison

The futile stockpiling of our brothers and sisters

And when they’re out, these erstwhile exiles

No longer fit the profile of a worthwhile punt

They must be imbeciles; their values must be totally different

Can’t reconcile employment with debilitating criminal illness

Forgetting that crimes are committed by almost all of us

What if everyone was charged the first time they tried drugs?

Everyone who shoplifted, downloaded a song, sped or littered?

Caught or not, it’s the overwhelming majority

That’s the sheer insanity of the us-and-them mentality

Our primal hostility masked as higher morality

Assumptions of purity are no more than an illusion

We prescribe division like our laws were the words of a god

And to break them is to trash our religion

But if you put everyone corrupt in jail, who will be left to lock us all in?

It’s a war of attrition that we’re never going to win

(c) Criminonymous

Growth without prosperity

(c) Criminonymous

Leading you into the long weekend, I am delighted to host another piece of political poetry from Criminonymous. If you prefer your "shotgun duels over fossil fuels" on paper as I do, read on.

A never ending focus on these manmade lines

Designed for our safety, but designed to confine

Does any of this actually mean anything?

Does having dual nationality prepare me for more eventualities?

What is beyond our control does not enlighten the person

I’m a no-name global citizen with a purpose

And understandably, while I focus on my love and on my family

I still elevate wider humanity, see

That’s what matters to me

Progress as a process requires harnessing our energy

We’ve had growth without prosperity

And now we have neither

Disappeared in the ether

Take a step back and find Mother Earth needs a breather

You think it’s easy to please her

But her beauty is intrinsically bound to deceive you

Into thinking she’s unlimited, clearly she’s exhibited

The signs that she can take no more of these derivatives

Unlimited subsidies will be beyond prohibited

When people realise all of the damage they cause

A series of flaws

A flaming ball of wreckage like the track at Le Mans

But the problem with the debate is not the intransigence

It’s that so many issues are at the same resonance

Irrespective of anything, oil isn’t infinite

We can’t keep forever increasing our own use of it

Soon so expensive that it will only be available

To tax exiles in St Lucia and those in Monaco

The conflation of climate change with other things we know

Ensures our response to other issues is also slow

But that’s not what is best for me or you

I don’t want to wait until there’s shotgun duels over fossil fuels

Although some would say it’s already started

With ever-more dangerous tools

While a minority monopolise the writing of rules

And my heart goes out to all of those affected who are fatherless

Those in Fallujah, cancerous and powerless

The person in jail who made one mistake last year

The whistleblower executed in oil-rich Nigeria

The millions of families who have been foreclosed illegally

It’s all crime in the way that it speaks to me

Believe me, when you come to pick your battles

Energy and food security alone will be a handful

But we also need political stability

Replace profit maximisation with relaxation and common decency

In the future, we will take back our liberties

You may doubt me, but it’s as simple as that

Everything we’ve lost, we will recover tit-for-tat

My delivery may be poor, but the words still have meaning

Read them back to yourself if you don’t think that you believe me

If global warming is only happening in our minds

Then how come in the Arctic you’ve found new places to mine?

(c) Criminonymous