In defence of shop lifters
THERE was a man in court earlier this week accused of ferrying a wanted man across the Irish Sea, from Carrickfergus in Ireland’s north-east to Port Patrick on the west coast of Scotland, aboard a private boat.
The ferryman was betrayed by his dog. A French pug. Cops say a French pug was observed boarding the boat with what looked like the accused on the night of the escape run and, when they raided his house a couple of days later, lo and behold, there was a French pug, just hanging out with the ferryman. Bail was denied. The case continues.
If you sit about for long enough in a court room, you get these moments of relief and you bank them, even when it’s at someone else’s expense, because a lot of the rest of the stuff that goes on is, well...
Did you hear the one about the fella who allegedly ran from TK Max with a £6.99 pair of socks? Judge gave him four months.
Judge says, because the defendant has nowhere to live, a custodial sentence would help him get his life together. Daniel hadn’t washed for several days when he allegedly took the goods. The prosecution says that although TK Max got the socks back, they “weren’t fit for resale”. It wasn’t made clear whether Daniel managed to get them on his feet before capture. Regardless, he managed to outrun security, only to be identified on CCTV by police and subsequently detained. Defendant has been released pending appeal. The judge gave no direction on where he might reside in the meantime.
Much court work is done by video link these days. For petty sessions, at least. Removes some of the cost of moving prisoners and legal representatives about. Usually, there is a grey room on a screen above the judge’s head and a disembodied voice answering when a demand for fresh meat is presented… ‘I’ll get him now Your Worship’… Then the top of a crew cut appears… ‘I swear by Almighty God’… Then a young one, a middling one, a young one, all looking far from fresh, all aging in the nanosecond it takes for their image to be sent from place of detention to court, are deposited in front of the grey wall… Sometimes the mute button is hit because the accused has become audibly upset at the direction proceedings are taking… Another benefit of video link… ‘What is the police attitude to bail?’ Laughing. Out. Loud.
And on… ‘Let’s execute the warrant on Mr N.’
‘Legal aid granted.’
‘Warrant executed. Probation order revoked.’
In the middle of the court room, there is a bewildering maelstrom of nervous activity and whispered chit-chat that replaces the withering rain you’ve just come in out of. The cold follows you in. There are easy smiles on the faces of the newly graduated legal professionals, bouncing on heels in anticipation of what life is about to bring… tonight, this summer, next year… One struts like an iguana in and out of the chamber without ever appearing to defend or prosecute a single soul, just tousling his silky dark hair and playing with his lavender band and collarette… The attitude of the new on the job veers wildly into deference upon a harsh look or word that might be headed in that direction from the judge… Paper rustling… You’re up… Throat clearing… Where is the accused? Is he outside? In the gallery? In cells below? Let me just check… No, he’s in Spain, your honour. Spain!?! Another one had beamed in from Spain the other day, initially unbeknownst to the Presiding. Smoking an e-cigarette on some sidewalk or other, summoning a smoker’s hackle from the back of their chest when the law men were trying to talk. You could sense the deflation in the Presiding’s voice when the defendant announced his location… ‘Spain, your honour. Death threats, you see,’ because it was sentencing day in the big house.
Back in the room, a woman is called and ushered. She stands in the dock, behind the big windows, charged with stealing £4.72 worth of goods from Home Bargains… A pair of gloves and a bottle of deodorant…. Said offence was stated by the relevant arresting officer to have taken place on February 5.
The temperature on February 5 was three below freezing. Even when it’s cold enough for your fingers to ache, still you sweat. But in towns across the land, this woman has dangerous fellow travellers who take it upon themselves to loot mittens, socks, scarves, whiskey, oranges, vodka, ready meals, nappies and a lot more besides. With the supply lines already under pressure, the warehouses could be bare if shoplifting was allowed to get out of hand.
And then where would we be? The market must be protected against the poor, but to protect the poor against the market would be to infringe upon their right to be poor. But still, you sit here in this big room, or at home with your belly aching, and ask yourself, ‘Is it criminal to be poor?’
Don’t be absurd, of course it’s no crime to be poor, the presiding judge in your mind might say. If it was, where then would charity fit in this immaculately ordered big society? If poverty was against the law, what would we do instead of Children in Need or Comic Relief? A year without a Red Nose Day to celebrate would surely feel like a wasted one. A generation deprived of Pudsey Bear would doubtless be one left bereft of direction or principles.
If we legislated against the poor, what would fill the news segments instead of the statistics of misery? Where would be without the annual hand wringing over the disparity in exam results? How could we navigate our condition, recognise who was worthy and who not, without the imbalance in life expectancy? How could we relate to Ebenezer Scrooge at Christmas?
Come on, FFS, of course it’s no crime to be poor, we live in a democracy do we not? People can choose to be anything they like in a democracy, even dirt poor.
It is suspect, though, to be conscious of the totally unnecessary nature of that state – of being poor, of it grinding you down day by stinking day, watching William Windsor on the TV talking about homelessness – and it certainly is a crime to act upon that consciousness. To be conscious to the degree that you would risk your liberty in a race against time down a rain sodden side street, G4S in hot pursuit, the line to the local cop shop already hot. Thus far and no further, Tramp.
So many cracks in the pavement though. So many flaws in the algorithm. We’ve built a metropolis of abundance in which we are all perpetually homesick. We gape at these cathedrals of luxury that tower over us and still trip over the need that lingers in the midst of them. Why is it the soul of a cold woman who can’t abide by these contradictions the one to go on trial? What is the true cost of the multitude of people and things that are put in motion, not to resolve this contradiction, but to bury it out of sight in an unmarked grave from which it keeps clawing itself free?
To be cold is not a crime, certainly not, you can’t judge someone for being cold, we’re real humane like that, but to get your meter chipped by a spark so that the bills stop coming even though the electric keeps running? To take food from a supermarket without paying? To plummet headfirst, far from the landlord’s threatening texts, stolen popcorn at the ready, into shows about gold heists without first paying for a TV licence? A Crime is a Crime is a Crime.
Committing these acts requires a degree of dishonesty, a preparedness to say ‘No’ when the cashier asks if there is anything else that needs paying for, but when we’re living in a society that refuses to look itself in the face, what is that degree worth? Could it even be measured on Dike’s scales?
We lie to ourselves and one another about war and the need for it and about peace and how it can wait, and then we lie to ourselves about rickety boats on the ocean and why exactly they’re bringing their modest payload of suffering children in our direction. We lie to ourselves that tomorrow will be better when what tomorrow will bring is a flood. Honesty is not the principle on which our society is organised, far from it, our organising principle is power and the ability to exercise it – even in a criminal manner – in the interests of further entrenching privilege. Poor scum be damned.
Petty sessions in courts across the land, for example, are an organised system of people of means sitting in judgement on people with none. The grotesque crafted imbalance is demonstrable in the swagger of those who are paid to be there versus the nervous breakdown disposition of those who are going to pay whether they like it or not, are going to have it squeezed out through their pores; it is obvious in the calm sense of ownership of space and time which lights the faces of the dispensers of justice versus the terrified expressions of those who know these things are stacked against them. Space and time may as well have been cruelly engineered solely to crush these lost ones personally. The vibrating limbs, the battle scars, the nervous tics are all on one side of the bargain in these palaces of jurisprudence.
It could be argued that the above is coming close to a truism, and that may be the biggest indictment of all. How is it possible for someone to write these few lines and be accused of predictability? How did we get here? Have we always been just here – right here – accepting the right of the comfortable to determine the parameters of dignity and survival?
What was that (imperfect) social contract, that (unequal) balance of forces, that belonged to us in the dim receding past? What did they call it? Welfare state or some such crap? When was it taken away? By whom? How did we let that happen? Why is it so unfathomable that it could be reconstructed on more solid foundations?
What is broken is an equilibrium – in us, in our relations with each other and our presumed betters and our means of organising for contentment and self-respect. What is broken is how we account to one another. How we account for where we are in the order of things and where others are not.
Maybe we should, after all, codify against the poor. Do away with the charade. Maybe we should make the state of poverty itself a crime, an offence against common decency, make it an abomination as bad as lying down with a farm animal before burning the barn over its dead head.
Maybe we should punish the guilty poor by carting them off in leather and linen to a riverside penthouse, with no right of appeal; set them up with an inheritance fund that will knock some swagger into them, make them see the error of their ways whether they like it or not; and in the interests of societal peace, let them loose to loot stockmarkets instead of supermarkets.
Then again, maybe I’m just criminally ill with envy, and how could envy ever be satiated by giving us something we haven’t earned?