On law and crime
To preface, I am writing this from an outside view of the legal system. These are simply observations from afar, nothing more.
To ask of law and crime retrieves a simple answer: "A set of rules that structure individuals within a society". To ask what a law is, means to open an antiquated tome to find linguistic definitions, outlines and so on. A law, perhaps, is constituted of ideas, regulations and procedures. But I would like to take a more grounded approach.
When one asks "what is a property law?" we may exhaust the pages of old, but we are missing something: Let us go to the property in question. A nice, suburban plot of land. In this environment we ask: What is the law of property? The answer surrounds it, a row of lined fences with barbed wire, perhaps an opening or two, but always functioning as a visual sign of the idea of "property". How does this property function? Let us step inside. The barbed wire has an opening, and now we are within this "property". Nothing happens. This notion of property is dependent on surveillance. Now let us set the field ablaze, as the cars look on passing by. How does this law of "property" function? Individuals communicate to funnily-dressed people, through a phone line or personally. They arrive and restrain us through physical actions, relying on their bodies and their handcuffs. From here we may say: the law of "property" is constituted of surveillance and enforcement. Both of these are operating on discretion, of course: Of the discretion of witness, and discretion of enforcers. We are transported to trial and sat down, gazed upon by the jury. These jury, then, must use their discretion to decide upon whether we have broken such a "property law". The jury gather their discretions, and then the judge provides their discretions. The entire "law" is constituted almost entirely of discretions, and the linguistic book of "laws" then, functions as a kind of koan, a generator from which millions of discretions can be made. So then, what is a law? From a grounded perspectives it is the discretions of individuals. And then what is a crime? Simply put; another discretion. If we must take anything from this journey, it is that who we consider to be "lawmakers" and "law-breakers" are in fact, on equal ground. This is also, in fact, how much of the police force operates, based on individual discretion, on minor annoyances, boredom, or ideological dispute. The police do not really have a "higher power" of law to operate on, they are constituted entirely of individual discretions, and so when faced with incarceration, one has every right to run.