Criminal nation [UK]: Two-thirds break law regularly
Crime and Punishment, Current Affairs, Law June 25th, 2007“Britain is a nation of petty criminals in which nearly two-thirds of people regularly break the law if they think they can get away with it, research shows.
And the middle classes are the most guilty, committing a range of offences that could land them with a criminal record against business, the Government and their employers. A study found that of those who admitted an offence, nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) committed up to three, and 10 per cent owned up to nine or more offences.”
The Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2705315.ece
June 25th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
I noticed this in the news, most interesting indeed. The problem is how do we break down and analyse the results. Are poeple truly more lawless, or are they just more dishonest? Is there a paradigm shift in moral norms, or are we just more aware of dishonest behavioural problems?
One thing is for certain, looking at the list of misdemeanours they are certainly not all equally wrong, and it would seem more people commit so-called ‘victimless crimes’ than victimised ones.
It is a truism of sorts, but worthy of mention, the more crimes you create through legislation, the more criminals you create.
June 25th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
“It is a truism of sorts, but worthy of mention, the more crimes you create through legislation, the more criminals you create.” That was the point I found interesting. Since law and morality is currently based on social agreement (in my humble opinion), we have the two not necessarily in agreement.
AC1
June 25th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Or another possibility is hypocrisy has reached epidemic levels.
What were you saying about society not being sick?
AC1
June 26th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Tis not society that is ill, but the way in which society is governed.
Laws are made by the legislators and not by the people, the social agreement, the contract between the individual and the state is a polite fiction at worst or a gross exaggeration at best.
As Ken Livingstone famously said “If Voting Changed Anything They’d Abolish It.”
Most governments are top-down organisations and the balance of power lays with the synchronicity of two specific groups ‘the elite’ (also known as ‘the haves’) and the ‘Vociferous Minority’ (as opposed to the ‘Silent Majority’). These two groups in alliance with each other represent political power (as it is today).
The important point here is that ‘the haves’ control the means of production (not necessarily in the marxist sense) for example they exact undue influence over the media, they control the economy (insofar as they effectively mint their own money*) and so on.
* I have a story that I will post sometime about the economics of a village and how the King by making his own money and thus reducing the value of his Baron’s wealth sets in chain a top down ecomonic movement. The Baron’s in order to maintain or approach a parity of wealth then increase the rent on their land. The farmers in order to maintain the parity of their wealth then increase the prices of their produce in the market… etc. The moral is the true facilitators of an economy (and often government) are those who ‘have’ and not us who ‘have not’.