I was working the over night shift at a little convenience store in Rockland Maine. The 11pm-7am shift sees very few customers with a few exceptions. The pizza delivery guy gassing up at the end of his shift, the alcoholic trying to get you to sell him that last twelve pack and he can't even walk straight. That is the first few hours. Then there is a lull until around 3 in the morning when the paper deliveries start and then the shift changeovers at the various companies that run all night.
The only regulars during this whole time are the local police officers, sheriffs, and state police officers. They come in for a cup of coffee, a few scratch off tickets, tobacco, etc. Usually they stick around for a bit and make chit chat. One evening I asked a sheriff how his evening was going and he said," It's quiet, there is absolutely nothing going on". Of course I replied, " That's good isn't it". He said no. He would rather have something to do. Now in my mind I am thinking, in order for you to have something to do that means that someone has to be committing some sort of crime. This got me thinking...is a crime free society not only possible, but desirable. So, I asked him, "Wouldn't it be nice if there was no crime"?; Is that not the ultimate goal of any society. He didn't seem to like that idea, because then he would be out of a job. I can understand that position, no one wants to be out of work. A point that is ringing loudly in our current economy.
It is a strange thing to think that if a crime free society were in our reach, would it actually be a good thing? Think of how many people would be unemployed. The majority of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies would no longer be needed. Each jurisdiction only maintaining a skeleton crew on the off chance that a crime did occur. The idea of it seems counter intuitive, because so many people out of work...one would think would eventually lead to crime.
A correlation can be made between unemployment and a spike in crime. I for one believe that as a society we must evolve, and do continually from generation to generation. Ideally one would think that it may be possible in some far off distant future that we could possibly get to a point where crime was obsolete. Wishful thinking, but for the sake of argument I would like to consider this possibility. Crime is bad, we have law enforcement to see to it that criminals are dealt with. One would think it would be a good thing if crime went away. And yet it seems, we cannot live without crime, because it would seem that it is a vital part of our economy and our way of life. Criminals see to it that people are kept employed and as long as they are out committing crimes than business is good. When a person commits a crime, it impacts some one else negatively. At the same time others are benefiting from that same crime. "One mans loss is another mans gain," so to speak.
All of this leads me to the conclusion that crime is fought half heartidly. We want to do a good enough job to keep it under control, but we do not want to eliminate it all together. Not that we could, in reality crime and criminals will always exist. I just find it interesting that in the end, even if we could eliminate crime, we wouldn't want to. Our society may be able to live without it, but our economy could not. And as for the criminals of the world, we may want to treat them with a bit more respect. After all they are doing their best to keep a great many people employed. That is a morbid thought, especially when you get into the particularly horrific crimes. The ones that inevitably end up tearing a family apart or scaring a victim for life. I guess in the end its just one of those conundrums that we have to live with in this world. That in the end even some good can and does come from a bad thing....even if not for some but for others.
Dennis James Huff
