On Fri, 28 Jun 2002, Paul Prescod wrote:
> Tahir Wood wrote:
> >
> > ... The state, which is an organisation
> > staffed by soldiers, the police, judges and jailers charged with enforcing
> > the law, is only needed in class society for in such societies there is no
> > real community of interest, only class conflict.
>
> This statement does not correspond with my experience or understanding
> of the world. Police, judges and jailers exist in large part to handle
> crimes of passion that have nothing to do with class conflict.
>
> Paul Prescod
Um, you might want to take a look at the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Property crimes are about 9-10 times more frequent than violent crimes, and only a subset of violent crimes are "crimes of passion". If we somehow eliminated all "crimes of passion", it would barely make a dent in the crime rate!
Miles