Meet Dominick Harvey. He burgled a person's house in Riverside California, played around with the stolen laptop when he got home, then hocked the laptop at a pawn shop, or some such. Yes, you've guessed it: he left a photo of himself on the laptop (and I have no doubt his fingerprints all over it).
Dominick Harvey is not one of my heroes. Nor is Jason Glennon, the Irish drug addict who recently took a photo of himself on a mobile phone he had lifted from a car, before leaving it in the house he went on to burgle. He was discovered in the act, and legged it, dropping the bag and mobile phone in his haste to escape. Photo found on phone, police informed, Jason sent straight back to prison.
The unfortunate truth is that most actual criminals are like this. Banal, unimaginative, and grubby. Crime is not a terribly good way to make a living (more on that later). Nor are the effects of of most crime terribly savoury. I have had friends whose house was burgled, and have had to watch them suffer through the trauma of no longer feeling safe in their own house.
Then there is violent crime, which I will state outright that I just do not like. Remember: I like the Thief best out of all the D&D classes, of which there are plenty of much more violent examples. I don't really go in for playing fighters, or barbarians, or rangers, or even the type of mage who stands there and slings around eldritch energy, causing havoc and mayhem with a flick of their wrists. Even the video games where you are a soldier, or perhaps a canny warrior don't really attract my attention. When I played Thief, I always played it at Expert level, which always forbade you to kill any humans. You literally failed the level if you killed someone. Instantly.
No, I need to make this clear: I do not sanction crime in general, or violence at all. Granted, theft is rarely a victimless crime, and I can't deny that someone gets hurt on some level by almost all crime. I do not say in this blog: let's celebrate murderers, burglars and thugs, rather let's enjoy the romantic fantasy of the Outlaw. The myth of the clever, intrepid, skilled professional, who at least has a sensibility of some form of justice when choosing his victims.
And it is abundantly clear from the two recent examples above that Crime in Real Life is rarely enjoyable in such a way.
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