- published: 17 May 2016
- views: 1268
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority (via mechanisms such as legal systems) can ultimately prescribe a conviction. Crimes may also result in cautions, rehabilitation or be unenforced. Individual human societies may each define crime and crimes differently, in different localities (state, local, international), at different time stages of the so-called "crime", from planning, disclosure, supposedly intended, supposedly prepared, incomplete, complete or future proclaimed after the "crime".[citation needed]
While every crime violates the law, not every violation of the law counts as a crime; for example: breaches of contract and of other civil law may rank as "offences" or as "infractions". Modern societies generally regard crimes as offences against the public or the state, as distinguished from torts (wrongs against private parties that can give rise to a civil cause of action).
When informal relationships and sanctions prove insufficient to establish and maintain a desired social order, a government or a state may impose more formalized or stricter systems of social control. With institutional and legal machinery at their disposal, agents of the State can compel populations to conform to codes and can opt to punish or attempt to reform those who do not conform.
And there's a fire on
the Junk island where
they send their garbage.
Is anybody listening?
After work we'll watch
the seagulls diving in
and out of the lashing towers of flame.
It twinkles like a pile
of rotting jewels left
to bake in the sun.
Is anybody listening?
And we're just like those condom wrappers
used up, torn up.
Thrown away.
And we're just like yesterday's headlines:
drifting, floating, towards the blaze.
'If we rob the
liquor store we could
be in Tijuana by the crack of dawn.
and if we rob the
Mayor's mansion
we could pawn his modern art and make a fortune.
and if we rob the lonely widow,
we could steal her credit cards
and buy a cottage by the Ocean
And we could swim in to Junk Island
we'll burn up like the seagulls and the whiskey bottles.
We're scrapped Valentines.
We're tangerine rinds.
We're Crimes, Crimes, Crimes, Crimes, Crimes.
And the children
in the subway
eating applecores.
Is anybody listening?
They're breathing paint out of plastic bags.
Their mumbled mouths say:
"Is anybody listening?"