Crime follows us no matter where we go. You can move past the suburbs, far beyond city lines, but that doesn't mean you're immune and you're definitely not safe. There are precautions to take, such as locking your doors and windows, and there are security systems but you can never be sure.
Some say the solution is to lock them all away. They think we can remove criminality like a tumor. Even if we could it would be too costly, to build and maintain a prison country inside our own. We could pass a new draconian law every day and change each penalty to death; we could place a cop on every single street corner, but we just can't stop unwanted behavior.
Some people do it for financial reasons. Some people do it without thinking at all. Some believe that they will never be caught and some just like breaking the rules. Whatever the reasons you can certainly be assured, that if there is freedom there will be crime.
Classic Movie Trailers - Clockwork Orange (1971)
Most of us have tried to change in one way or another. You may want to slim down or stop drinking, but the underlying goal is always the same. The plight of human life is the desire to improve it, with the inability or unwillingness to do so. If we truly hope to succeed as people, we have to want it bad enough.
Everyone will make it in their own time, or they won't make it period. For any transition to become permanent, there has to be internal motivation. Our job should be to get out of the way and remove other obstacles. While consequences are absolutely necessary, no one can move forward without leaving the past.
What if you shoplifted, at 23 years old, and found yourself explaining it at forty? An impulsive act, to take what you couldn't afford, could mean that you are never able to earn it. If criminal records create career criminals, what is the purpose of keeping them? You wind up with a surge of unemployed and hopeless, threatening the businesses that turn them away.
The only thing worse than a broke criminal, is a homeless bum in our caste system. What is federal prison but a ghetto? What is high society with citizens so low? The penitentiary is a concentration camp, assigning numbers more important than names.
Of course, we would dream of ways to end it. In a perfect world reform would be a simple task. Unfortunately, people are free to take the wrong path. So what happens when we remove that freedom?
A human being is not a robot. Nor is he a pet to be humbled or put down. If you remove the choice to be a criminal, you turn free men into slaves. Anyone forced to be upright and pious, fails to be either and succeeds in misery. We would know even less of our neighbors, and we'd have more reasons for suspicion and distrust.
I think we have to face it at the end of the day. The criminal life is an unavoidable byproduct. We can talk about capitalism, socialism and communism, but every system will have outcasts. If we do believe in freedom and champion it, we have to do so when it doesn't work for all.
It is important to note, there are people unfit to walk outside the prison yard. Blood is a welcome sight to this demographic, and the screams of rape that sicken us, sound sweet to his ear. For this man, I refer you to a medical professional; some diseases result in cuffs and chains.
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See "A Clockwork Orange" on Netflix!
Next Week: "Deliverance"
Happy Independence Day America...
Enjoy your freedom.
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