I've been having more and more mixed feelings about "laws" lately. I mean, police are an important part of keeping a society civil. Prisons (or some incarceration system) are needed for dangerous folks like serial killers. But the law enforcement always had some leeway, to get you off with a warning, being human and understanding and giving folks a chance. On the flip side, that leeway also allowed for some shitty practices like discrimination and biases to be common. And now with the fight for more fairness, and more and more perfect information of you crimes because of technology... EVERYONE BREAKS THE LAW (sometimes). And this surveillance shit is lacking humanity, and can fuck your life just cause you talked to the wrong people once and then the AI looked into your file. And now you're on the hook for some semi-illegal shit you did years ago.
If you're interested in challenging those beliefs further, I'd recommend a couple excellent books. Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America by Kristian Williamspolice are an important part of keeping a society civil. Prisons (or some incarceration system) are needed for dangerous folks like serial killers.
I'll add it to the list! I mostly put that in because I do believe some kind of moderating authority is useful in society. Consequences for shitty actions are useful. People will take advantage of each other if there are benefits for be gained. And plain unmoral people exist too. Heck, I'm hoping to volunteer as a type of conflict resolution entity at Burning Man next week. So it's not like I reject the idea of cops in principle. But the way the system is set up now and the way it's trending is worrisome to me.
And we're already in that age. The modernization of police forces and the introduction of nationwide crime databases have already had these types of consequences. Years ago I read a book written by an ex-FBI agent about how to, basically, avoid getting arrested. The book itself is pretty terrible, loaded with unfunny coined terms he invented and tough-guy macho bullshit, but an important point he raised was that prior to technology, a brush up with the law didn't have to carry lifelong consequences. A lack of computerized databases meant all you needed to do to was skip town and nobody would ever know. There were only paper records at best. Another point he made was police services used to be a lot more corrupt, which was bad, but you could occasionally make evidence of your wrongdoing disappear if someone in town could vouch for you. Story time. A relative (can't say who) and their friends stole a bunch of stuff from a record store when they were 19 or so. Ended up getting arrested, booked into jail, the works. What happened? A detective that lived on the same street made the conviction "disappear." Now almost 50 years later it may as well have not existed. Dude went on to be a very high up technology manager (I think almost the CTO?, assistant vice president?) at a huge company. Fuck-you money. Now? Good luck. We might not have social credit here in the Western world but I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow's kids have to optimize their score while they're CEOing some charity just to get into college and be guaranteed a 1/5 chance at the middle-class.
Yeah, it sucks :( we all do dumb shit from time to time (and hopefully learn from our mistakes). Practically everyone did some underage drinking for example. Now imagine getting caught and have that on your record forever? I have a friend with a drug possession charge (weed, before it was legal) and she had to wait 10 years to expunge her record to be able to visit the states. It’s like the government is now a helicopter parent