Clearly not Professional Grade Criminals

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not willing to listen to you, so when we receive suggestions from our supporters we take them into account. One such suggestion (which incidentally came from Janet Ridley's application for membership) was that what is wrong with the status quo is that we have unlicensed and unregulated criminals running rampant in society. If we could just get them to register, pay a fee, and then perform licensed criminal acts our society would be a much safer place, especially for the criminals themselves. We have been in contact with Janet to ensure that we understood her correctly and we have been engaged in surveillance of the criminal world for many months now, and we are ready to report on our findings.

According to our studies, the criminal world is indeed a very dangerous place, especially for the inexperienced or incompetent criminal. Because there is no control placed on who may enter into a life of crime we found that over 70% of criminals were ill-prepared for the consequences of their actions. We collected many examples, but this recent example illustrates the point as well as anything. It seems that our aspiring theives were caught in the act, and due to their inexperience they fled, leaving behind photographs of themselves, complete with their address on the pouch.

Now, if these two women had been licensed criminals they would have taken courses in avoiding capture and would have surely known to grab their photos before making a break for it. In fact, had they been properly trained they would have known how to not draw attention to their shoplifting efforts. We're not yet completely convinced that Janet's idea should be implemented, but we can say that implementing it would allow us to regulate the criminal world and would reduce violence as criminals could approach the licensing body to resolve disputes rather than injuring or killing each other. It would also discourage unlicensed participation in crime, which would free up our law enforcement resources to deal with the more capable licensed criminals.