DRJ, one of the posters on Patterico’s Pontifications, has a post up, Stupid Criminals, Vol. 1. In it he relates the story of a fine upstanding citizen illegal immigrant who called the sheriff in Hidalgo County, Texas, to complain that two men broke into his house and stole 150 lb of marijuana.
But the phrase “stupid criminals” sort of assumes that there is another kind of criminal. Even the Enron leaders, Jeff Skilling and Kenneth Lay, “The Smartest Guys in the Room,” turned out to be somewhat less bright than they believed. I may not have Mr Skilling’s money, and I’m just a working man, but, then again, I’m not locked up in federal prison for 24 years and four months.¹
It is the case of John Lewis, the thug who murdered Police Officer Charles Cassidy, that gets to me. Upon being captured, Mr Lewis said, “I apologize to his family. I never meant anything to happen like this.”
No, I’m sure that he didn’t. But Mr Lewis walked into a Dunkin’ Donuts, with a handgun, and attempted to rob it. Even though he obviously didn’t plan on a police officer walking in, he planned the robbery. Well, you walk into a store and flash a gun and rob the place, and it’s five years, minimum, in the state penitentiary if you get caught. And places like that have security for cash; as soon as the clerks get a certain amount of money on hand, they have to drop it into a safe they cannot open. Any crook trying to rob a Dunkin’ Donuts or a Seven-Eleven or anyplace like that knows that the clerk can’t give up more than $40 or so. Just how smart is it to risk five years in the big house for $40?
The fast food joints around Philadelphia start people at $7.15, the state’s minimum wage, if not a bit more. And it really doesn’t take much to get hired at McDonald’s or Burger King; just take a bath before you apply and try to wear clean clothes, and they’ll pretty much give you a chance. At $7.15 an hour, Mr Lewis could have made more money, after taxes, in just one workday at McDonald’s than he possibly could have expected to haul in from the robbery he attempted, even had it been successful.
Yet Mr Lewis somehow thought it was smarter to risk five years in the pen than to work for eight hours. Something happened that he hadn’t planned on, and instead of the five years he risked, he’s going to spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars. He’s 21 years old, had the whole of his adult life before him, and this criminal mastermind now gets to look forward to being locked in a cage for maybe sixty years.
I detailed the story of Kareem Johnson, 21, and Kennell Spady, 22, in the Street Justice series. Messrs Johnson and Spady, drug gang members, somehow thought it an absolutely brilliant idea to ambush rival drug gang members when the intended victims were dropping their kids off at an elementary school! The idea that firing off three dozen rounds in an area full of kids might result in one of the children getting killed never seemed to occur to these two rocket scientists, and they, like Mr Lewis, are going to spend the rest of their miserable lives in jail.
The penalties that the state, that every state, has in place for crimes, are severe enough that it’s never worth getting caught. Even if you can steal as much as Mr Skilling, I’d guess that he’d be happy to trade places with me right now, and have to work greasing a concrete plant or shoveling 57 stone from under a tail pulley on a conveyor belt, rather than spend the next 24 years in the slammer, even if he did get filthy rich for a while. Even one of the smartest guys in the room turned out to be a lot dumber than a plain, honest working man.
Criminals are stupid, just plain stupid, by definition. There is simply no logic by which you can compare the potential gain to the potential penalty, and ever conclude that crime is smart.
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¹ – Kenneth Lay was convicted, but died between conviction and sentencing.
