Values

What is crime? The dictionary says:

• an action or omission that constitutes an offense that may be prosecuted by the state and is punishable by law.
• an action or activity that, although not illegal, is considered to be evil, shameful, or wrong.

So, if I understand this correctly, there are two definitions. One that says you are breaking the law, and one that says you are not, but it is bad anyway. This seems a bit contradictory to me. The problem is that there is no clear source for where the laws come from. It is apparent that many laws serve only a select number of people, often grouped by religious belief. The flip side is when you are not breaking the law, but rather, doing evil deeds. Again, who decides what is evil. Again, this serves a select number of people, often grouped by religion.
You may be wondering why this opinion is not grouped under religion. In fact, there are religious issues involved here. On the whole, this is more a statement of societal values. The real question concerning crime is: Does what I am doing or not doing affect others negatively? This is difficult to answer in terms of religion, because most religions are limited by piousness rather than morality.

For example: lets look at drugs. The crime is not in the use of drugs. So what if a person gets high. There are two places where crime comes into play.

1. When a person get’s so wasted that they are unable to control their behaviour.
2. When a person gets so addicted that they will do anything to get the next fix, including theft and murder.

So, that sounds pretty bad, but then alcohol and cigarettes are not illegal, and people can suffer the same way from them as they do from drugs. So why the difference? Why would they be legal and not things like marijuana? Let’s look to the prohibition. It would seem that the rate of violent crime increased dramatically during the prohibition, and dropped again afterwards. I won’t bother giving numbers since they are readily available if you’re into some research. I got most of my info on the prohibition effects from an article written by Jeffrey A. Miron, Boston University. I guess that if people want something, the law won’t get in their way, so rather than making something illegal, perhaps it is sometimes better to keep it legal and then regulate it. This has the benifits of protecting the individual, as well as bringing in more tax dollars.

Another example: prostitution. Yes, there are forms of prostitution that should be illegal and I’m not even getting into child abuse. It is not the prostitution that is the problem, but the forcing. If a person is forced against his or her will to perform acts of sex (acts of anything for that matter), then a crime is happening against them and they deserve the protection of society. If a person, of their own free will sells sex to someone willing to buy it, or someone buys sex from someone willing to sell it, of their own free will, that should be their own business. If the government gets in the way of that, they are denying us our rights of freedom. That is itself a crime because it harms others.