I was watching on the news tonight, another group of people broke into a gas station in Milwaukee and stole a big handful of scratch-off lottery tickets. This has to be Darwinism at work because it could be the dumbest crime ever. The second the thief left the place of business, the tickets were invalidated. Even if they scratched off a big winner, the second they tried to cash them in, it will be pretty obvious who stole that ticket. “Yay, I won! Oh, hello officers.”
This got me thinking. This is genius. Maybe this is an excellent way to weed out potential thieves from the gene-pool? Cities should just randomly leave kiosks full of scratch-off lottery tickets sitting unattended at points throughout the city. Anyone who steals the tickets and tries to cash them in will be instantly exposed and taken instantly into custody. There’s no real expense to the city except in the printing cost of the tickets themselves. They’ve got lottery money already coming in hand-over-fist that will more than offset that cost. And, it will give legislators a soapbox to stand on in defense of the lottery. “Fighting crime one scratch at a time!”
What better way to get people off the streets who have a penchant for crime? Honest people won’t steal the tickets, only budding thieves. Catch people before they have a chance to commit a bigger crime. It’s not entrapment, it’s a litmus test to reveal character flaws before they have a chance to exacerbate into purse snatching, assault, or armed robbery. Print lots of $500 and $1,000 winners so they come scurrying back quickly. This will help our over-burdened court system, our over-crowded jails, and will even be a public service to the criminal.
You can think of this like criminal fly paper. Think about it: if you have a dumb fly buzzing around your living room, sooner or later it’s going to get to you and bother you. Even if it hasn’t yet. It’s going to eventually find you. By hanging a strip of flypaper for it to catch itself on, you’ve saved yourself a ton of grief and gotten that fly out of your environment sooner rather than later. Solve the problem while it’s small I say.
The fly can’t help itself. Neither will thieves.
