CULTURE
Would an Annual ‘Purge’ Really Reduce Crime?
Or, why legalizing crime is a ridiculously stupid idea
A few months ago I was hanging out with some guys from my hometown. I don’t recall how the conversation veered in this direction, but at some point one of them suggested, to general approval, that the best way to deal with violent criminals would be to bring back gladiator contests.
The people get entertainment, and at the end of the day there are fewer murderers and rapists. Win-win!
I didn’t let on how appalling I found the notion. I simply offered that, once people had gotten a taste for violence as spectacle, there’s no telling where it might lead. Today it’s violent criminals. Tomorrow it’s nonviolent ones. Eventually maybe they’re sending homeless people or debtors into the pits. You miss a mortgage payment or a credit card payment, and that’s it. Pick up a sword.
You only like this idea, I said, because you can’t imagine you’d ever be the one in the arena. As for me, I’d rather not vote for the leopards eating peoples’ faces party, if you know what I mean.
They didn’t.
I recalled that conversation recently when, scrolling through the streaming options on Peacock, I came across the 2013 film The Purge. Set in…