A World Made for Crime

     Our society (in North America) is quite hypocritical. We look down on criminals; we talk low of them and we send them to jail, yet we facilitate their behaviour in many aspects. There are clear examples of this, which show our double-standards.

     There is a convenience store a few minutes away from my house which sells all sorts of paraphernalia. There are rolling papers and bongs for smoking weed (I do not want to hear the excuse that rolling papers are for rolling tobacco – hardly anyone smokes cigarettes which need to be rolled and I have yet to hear of someone smoking tobacco in a bong). The store also offers digital scales of all shapes and sizes and I am sure those are not for measuring your spices in the kitchen. Digital scales are for the most part used to weigh illegal drugs. Also the plastic little baggies … those nail sized ones with tiny skeleton heads or weed leaves drawn all over them, I wonder what those are for? What can you possibly fit in a plastic zip-lock bag the size of your thumb other than drugs of some sort? All these are sold at a convenience store where everyone from kids to grannies go in and such stores are all over the place. To me that shows how the sale and use of drugs is furthered by our society as a whole. Nobody seems to care about such products; they get sold and people make money from selling them. Everyone is happy until someone gets thrown in jail for possession (in the case of the United States).

     The other day I was in a friend’s car and we passed by a speed trap (a police car with a radar, hanging out on the side of the road enforcing the speed limit). Out of nowhere my buddy said:

     “Ohh, I would’ve seen that guy if I had my scanner on?”

     I learned about police scanners (electronic devices that show you the position of a police vehicle with radar on a map) many years ago. I had friends who had it before. I always abstained from getting one because I knew of someone who got caught with one and the fine was about eight hundred dollars – for me that was not worth it.

     What I saw next though amazed me. My friend was messing around with his phone and when I asked him what he was doing he said:

     “I am turning on the application?”

     “What,” I replied confused.

     “My police scanner” he answered.

     I was truly stupefied. It turned out his phone had an application on it available that used the phone’s GPS system to locate police vehicles with radar. Within a minute of him turning this ‘thing’ on, a tiny map of our surroundings appeared on his phone display with little red dots, showing the location of the police cruisers. This is available on cell phones … that just blew my mind! How much easier can it be to find out where the cops in the area are? Who says that this society doesn’t help people commit crimes? I think it actually encourages it in a way.

     The last example I wanted to talk about is the copying of music. I bought some blank HP CD-R (cds) to use for … whatever reason. This is what the cover reads on the top of the stack of cds: “Ideal for music, photo and data recording.”

     So, while corporations and some musicians are crying about their loss of profit, stores sell cds on which they tell you first and foremost that they are ideal for copying music. If people were really displeased about those criminals `burning` songs perhaps such cds should not be available at any store that involves electronics or computer parts. Why does the computer itself have an option of `Burning music cds. My Windows 7 clearly helps `criminals` copy music.

     If we allow such products to be sold, which facilitate criminal acts then, we should not seem amazed that such crimes exist. It makes me feel that I am living in a retarded society; there are so many double standards and things that make no sense …