To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.
The law does not content itself with classifying and punishing crime. It invents crime.
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
The law is a gun, which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty, it hits someone else. As every crime creates a law, so in turn every law creates a crime.
I think it can be shown that the law makes ten criminals where it restrains one.
We make our own criminals, and their crimes are congruent with the national culture we all share. It has been said that a people get the kind of political leadership they deserve. I think they also get the kinds of crime and criminals they themselves bring into being.
Or is it the mind state that's ill, creating crime rates to fill the new prisons the build
Look at the whole criminal correction game, which is a big piece of our economy. It's just an invention. Crime is being invented to put people to work.
No regulation can be enforced which is not reasonable.... Unenforceable or harassing laws tend to make criminals.
The government may set decoys to entrap criminals. But it may nor provoke or create a crime, and then punish the criminal, its creature.
Human nature is weak enough and sufficiently beset by temptations without government adding to them and generating crime.
