I tried to determine if there was a significant difference in behavior between those who would later be apprehended for missed child support payments and those whose crime of choice was more violent and taboo. Were the overly aggressive athletes more likely to commit violent crimes? Or did the violence come from the ones rarely smiled and engaged in conversation just as infrequently? Oh sure, a prostitution or trespassing violation may be easy enough to spot even in one’s youth, but what separated the truly depraved from the marginally unsuited for society? These are likely the questions that haunt criminologists and psychologists on a regular basis and I seriously doubt that the Gaston County Lockup will provide us with much insight, but the question still begs. What makes a criminal a criminal, and furthermore, what distinguishes mild criminal behavior from the truly felonious?
As I developed a connoisseur’s pallet in my evaluation of the Lock-Up, my entertainment was primarily derived from observing a perpetrator’s picture and guessing the crime for which they were charged. In this task I became quite adept. A young teenage girl invariably was a larcenist whereas the glassy eyed well dressed “out of towner” was consistently charged with DWI. The art and sophistication of stereotyping is a skill to be mastered if you are to become a true purveyor of the Lock-Up. And yet as my skills sharpened, my desire to use these skills weakened because of the terrible secret that I had attempted to contain. To believe that I could accurately predict the crimes given the face and attire of each criminal flew in the face of my previously noted problem with determining the degree of criminality amongst my former peers. How could I now see the face of a stranger and predict a crime when I so often experienced not only the face but the behavior of my former schoolmates and could not make the same estimation? Had their faces magically become the faces of criminals in just the 5 short years since I last saw them? Not to me. When I observed familiar faces I saw only the face I knew years ago. There was nothing inherently criminal about their demeanor. It is because of this inconsistency that I abandoned this means of evaluating the Lock-Up and sought a new understanding.
My latest and I must say most enjoyable and enlightening understanding of the Lock-Up is grounded in our fundamental definitions of criminality. I finally realized, through the previously mentioned inconsistency in my Lock-Up logic, that stereotyping, while initially promising, was an empty field of study. What were truly entertaining were the very crimes themselves. For instance, the Lock-Up roster is routinely filled with drug offenders, and yet the charges are flagrantly inconsistent. One gentleman may be arrested for misdemeanor possession while another is convicted of intent to traffic and these convictions are based solely on the amount of contraband each gentleman has in his possession. There are no questions asked about the degree to which each gentleman uses his drug of choice on a regular basis. The rigidity of the law demands no understanding of a person’s habits. A law based on quantitative measures is used to enforce an inherently qualitative offense. By the logic of the law, a person charged with misdemeanor possession was in fact at some point accessory to trafficking, and yet the trafficker bears the brunt force of the law, regardless of the fact that he is simply a slave to the demands of an unspoken market.
I also found interest in virtually all assault cases. Assault is a rather prevalent crime on the Lock-Up, and yet in some ways it does not make sense. Assault cases typically culminate in the arrest of one individual, and yet random acts of assault are extremely rare. Even the most criminal of our race are typically guided by some form of logic and thus do not engage in random acts of violence on other people. Regardless, assault crimes almost always involve the arrest of one person. There are million dollar ad campaigns designed to convince this citizenry that verbal abuse is as dangerous if not more dangerous than physical abuse, and yet those who render their assault in physical form, even if in response to verbal abuse, are infinitely more likely to suffer consequences at the hands of the state. An interesting double standard by almost any logic.
So how does this all tie together? I will admit that I cannot say with complete certainty that I understand the dynamics of criminality. In fact I can say with complete certainty that I do not understand the dynamics and complexities of criminality, but I can make observations. What I realized through Lock-Up is that criminality is random and relative. It is random in the fact that one look at the Lock-Up will show you a cross section of our society. It is not a collection of the scoundrels and “no-goods” of our society, but rather is a collection of our neighbors and potentially our friends. My former classmates that found their way to the Lock-Up page had no huge degree of difference from those who did not. Criminality is relative in the sense that what may seem to be a crime to some is in no way a crime to others. If I burn down my neighbors house and am arrested for arson, most would view this as a crime; but if I did this because my neighbor asked me to so that he could collect a hefty insurance settlement then I would only consider this a friendly favor for a good friend. Although if he is caught then he will be charged with insurance fraud. But some may say he stole from the insurance company and call it larceny. And if my neighbor is charged with either larceny or insurance fraud, shouldn’t I be absolved of my crime of arson? But what if I started the fire while smoking marijuana? Then what am I charged with? Hmmmmm…I guess whatever it is would be a lot better than being charged with arson, so long as I’m not carrying too much.
