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It ought to be a crime!

© Su Epstein

Have you ever wondered why something is a crime, but other things, things that seem just as bad to you, are not? Or why something you think really is no big deal is against the law? What makes something a crime? Well, yeah, the simple answer is laws and the dull answer is about how laws are made, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

Did you know that in most places cannibalism is not technically against the law? Now, don’t get me wrong I’m not suggesting you take up this diet, nor that you won’t get arrested and spend a very long, unpleasant stay behind bars for doing it, but you might be hard pressed to find the law that makes the behavior illegal.

So what does make something a crime? The consensus of fear.

You can think of all human behaviors as falling on a continuum. At one end are all those things we perceive as “normal,” acceptable behaviors from something as silly as brushing our teeth to grocery shopping. At the other end of the spectrum are those things that we find horrible and unthinkable, for example cannibalism or necrophilia. All other behaviors fall somewhere in-between. If we travel down this continuum from the acceptable toward the unthinkable, first we hit behaviors that we may find a little weird. These would be actions that break social rules and make us uncomfortable. The degree that we find the behaviors weird shifts from person to person. Maybe it’s nudists, the kid with a Mohawk, the guy on the subway that stares at the roof, the woman who attempted suicide, the group that wants to make prostitution legal … As we inch our way towards the unthinkable behavior at the other end of the continuum, we find behaviors that we consider more and more objectionable until we include things we consider crimes – suicide, prostitution, embezzlement, tax evasion, theft, assault, murder, rape. For each person any given behavior may fall at a different point on the spectrum. For some prostitution may be only a little odd and they don’t see why it should be a crime, while others might find it very objectionable and think criminal penalties should be stronger. However, in general and overall in society there is some agreed upon ranking. Most people would agree that murder is closer to the unthinkable or “worse” than embezzlement or theft. Likewise, most people would say that theft is “worse” than talking to one’s self or having a unique hairstyle.