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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

An End to Crime

Feel-good headline of the past week: "Colorado Sells $34 million of Cannabis: $3.4 Million Goes To Schools, Crime Down 15%."

The headline came from a website called Higher Perspective, so maybe it's not the most objective source for this information. But it does make sense if you think about it. If there are fewer crimes - e.g., possession of marijuana - the crime rate should go down.

The article says the Colorado murder rate has gone down by almost half. Murderers don't seem to have the same initiative they used to have. Or maybe they're less angry. Someone needs to study this.

Or maybe we should just relax and enjoy it.

Be that as it may, the lesson here is that we need to cut down on crimes to cut the crime rate. So what should be legal?

I'd start with all kinds of parking.

I know parking tickets are a valuable revenue source, but consider the value of unlimited anytime, anyplace parking. If it's seemingly impossible to find a vacant space in an urban area, why would you want to drive?

It's a boon to public transportation and the environment. And the spiritual well-being brought on by not getting ticketed should cut the murder rate in half.

Combine free unlimited parking with marijuana and there may never be any violent crime.

Next, I'd do away with the crime of driving without a license. This may seem like a threat to public safety, but is it really?

Consider the death and injury rate on the highways as it is. Could it possibly get much worse?

Now consider basic theory of risk-taking. It's been shown that if you make something safer, all you do is make people think they can act more recklessly, thereby negating the impact of the safety measures.

Imagine how carefully and alertly everyone will drive if there are 90-year-olds and 6-year-olds out there behind the wheels.

This could be the boon that rail transportation needs to take off.

And with all those people eschewing driving, there will be much less road rage and the murder rate should be cut in half.

Now here's a crime to take off the books that will really cut down the murder rate: murder.

If murder is no longer a crime, the murder rate will be cut to nothing.

Think of this in terms of the drug war. We have laws against drug-taking and laws against murder, but we still have drug-taking and murder. So why not give law enforcement a break and use all that public safety funding for something that really works - like civil courts.

A murderer might take decades to go through the legal system and linger on Death Row, but you don't need a unanimous jury or lack of reasonable doubt for a defendant in a homicide civil suit.

Think O.J.

There would be no grand jury, no prosecutors with discretion, no double jeopardy, no inadmissible evidence.

The homicide rate would be cut in half.

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