One can argue that there are truly only three types of crime in the world: two that we could consider “natural” and grave, and one that must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. These are: rape and homicide (the grave ones) and robbery with violence (to be evaluated).
While this sounds like a blunt and simplistic reductionism, I will add another category: civilized crimes.
For now, let us dare to think in these terms, using only these categories. But why?
It happens that the State (at least the types of State functioning in this part of the world)—heavy and paralyzed, like a motionless elephant—has no right to demand more from its citizens. It lacks the justifications to underpin its demands, so it uses its entire penal power to enforce them. Because it cannot find a way to demand—due to its inability to safeguard the basic human rights of every individual—yet still (and with increasing force) must infinitely justify itself, it demonstrates with spotlights and publicity that if one does not obey, there is a vast collection of existing penal charges ready to be dumped on any head, regardless of history, context, or reason.
The oblivious public loves this spectacle of dumping punishment, applauding the State swindle. I see this display of force as THE great scam: a machinery of impotence because it only punishes a fact that was neither prevented nor will be prevented. The State never asks what forces pushed a person toward an action, and it exercises no counter-force to reverse the system’s trend (criminal behaviors); it only performs a police theater to generate mirages.
THE IGNORANCE OF THE HONEST, HARD-WORKING CITIZEN IS THE STATE’S GREATEST JOY.
BACK TO REALITY
In my economic descent, before I had to live in the “villa” (slum), I rented a brand-new apartment with every comfort, far removed from everything I experience now and have experienced over the last four years. I was always active in community activism, from the age of eighteen until approximately twenty-three. Later, the struggle to make ends meet absorbed me, and my body could no longer give as much. However, my origin and intuition always told me where I belong; I have always defended those who have the least—physically, conceptually, and philosophically. Even when living among the wealthy, even when I generated wealth, I never moved away from that inherent belonging.
I mention this so that the following situation can be understood: there came a point where my own rebellion made it impossible for me to continue working in certain environments, and I began to have problems with rent and maintaining my lifestyle. Eventually, I ended up working as a delivery rider for a local agency. While working as a delivery driver, there is one experience I cannot forget:
It was three in the afternoon on a weekday, and I had to make a trip to the corner of Cabral and Mattasi (a complicated sector of my city, though not the worst). I was riding a brand-new motorcycle into an area I knew was “jodida” (tough). Despite it being broad daylight, I didn’t get off the bike or turn off the engine, just in case I had to bolt. That very address I had to visit, which terrified me then, is the one where—months later and currently—I found myself living. Becoming part of the day-to-day, learning everything my theory once defended, but from here, from the inside.
Ending up living at the exact same address strikes me as ironic.
Therefore, everything I have experienced here gives rise to this text. The following reflection will be as objective as possible. It tells the story of a 25-year-old man, sentenced in a summary proceeding to 4 years in prison for street-level drug dealing; in his home, they found 800g of marijuana. Justice celebrates, and the “spotless” ladies and gentlemen (ethical, moral, responsible, hard-working) applaud on Facebook. I laugh, because if they knew “how things really are,” with their shifting and unreliable morality, they would end up demanding a life sentence—and a man with an enormous heart would rot in prison.