By request, this next article is about crime in America. But is crime really the problem? It's always been around since the beginning of mankind. Purveyors of crime, like Billy the Kid, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone and the like have a storied history in this country making them quasi-folk heroes that even Hollywood took notice of. Pablo Escobar is as close to a national icon as you get in Columbia. Crime is bad, right?
So let's break this down to it's primal elements. What is a crime? A crime is an action that society, as a group, has deemed unwanted, inappropriate, causes harm, and/or is sinful. Who gets to define what is or is not a crime? Welp, supposedly, we do. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, there are a litany of things that the Bible speaks to that have been accepted as crimes. Robbery and murder come to mind. But there are also things in the Good Book that USED to be considered crimes, but aren't seen quite as harsh as they once were. In America, you see, with a firm belief in separation of church and state, not everything that's a sin is a crime. In fact, out of the 10 Commandments, 7 of them AREN'T crimes any more, a few are commonplace in modern America, and a few of them aren't even considered rude anymore. That's the nature of crime, you see. It's very subject to interpretation.
Back several decades, people involved in what was called "organized crime" engaged in what the FBI called "racketeering". Part of that endeavor was called the "numbers racket". People would place a bet with a guy called a "bookie" as to what 3 numbers would be selected the following day. The 3 numbers would be determined different ways, depending on where you lived. In some places, it would be the last 3 numbers in the daily take at a famous horse racing track. Other places used different sources for the number determination. The bottom line was that, if you picked the correct 3 numbers, you would win 600 times whatever you wagered. A one dollar bet would garner you a $600 payday. Nobody made anyone bet, you see. Bet if you want. Don't bet if you didn't want to. So long as the bookies paid the winners, there was no "victim". No one was harmed and harm is primary driver in how exactly we define what a crime is. When something is a crime, a law is written to say so. The original intent of our Constitution by the framers was to say that anything that isn't so designated as "illegal" by law was, ipso facto, LEGAL and, thus not a crime. That's called freedom, folks.
It seems, over time, that we have kinda gotten off that track. With the numbers game, the government SAID it was illegal (even though there was no specific law that said so) and incarcerated thousands of "bookies" and "racketeers" for TAKING the bets. Interestingly, no one was ever arrested for MAKING the bets. The government, it would seem, saw a nuance there. In fact, that nuance was so stark to them that state governments all over the country proceeded to enact laws creating "lotteries"! Presto!!!! Something that was illegal (when done by private citizens, to no one's harm) became legal when the operation was taken over by the government. Magic! It was also magical, if you will, that the odds went from 600 to 1 (when Guido took your bet) down to 500 to 1 when the state you live in took the bet. Oh, and by the way, even though the "lottery" is now legal, it is still ILLEGAL in all 50 states for a private citizen to take a bet on the very same number draw the state now runs. Yup, that's right. The guy that says "I'll take your 3 digit bet on tonight's lottery and I'll pay you 600 to 1 if you win" is still committing a crime and will be arrested. Don't worry though, either way, you can still play the number. That's still not a crime...?
A crime, it would seem, is not quite as easily determined as we once were taught to believe. As I said before, inevitably, it was left up to the governed what would be listed as a "crime". We, as citizens of a representative republic and under the rules set forth by the Constitution, are solely endowed with the power to decide what we would like to deem "illegal". We, as a group, elect our leaders, and it is their mandate to forward OUR belief systems and construct a framework of laws regarding the governance of our collective behaviors. Or so we were taught in Civics class in school. In the next few installments to this piece, I will try to illustrate where that train (so to speak) derailed and we are no longer the arbiters of our own societal norms. You see, we are no longer governed. In today's America, we are, indeed, ruled.
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