> Oh come on. If there weren't any criminals I'd be looking for
> work. I am in fundamental disagreement with Wojtek on this issue,
> but there are no criminals? Nonsense.
Why so literal? The point obviously was not that there are no people who engage in conduct that fits within socially-defined categories called "crimes." (We all do that.) The point was that people who use the word "criminal" in the manner Woj did do not do so to casually describe the set of people who have engaged in such conduct (which, as I've said, is everybody) but instead to segregate, isolate and dehumanize a selective group of people (which is actually a small subset of all criminals). This dehumanization of people into a class that is separate and apart from the rest of society is required before harsh punishments, like the death penalty, can be socially acceptable. The State kill "criminals," not its own citizens!
If our sibling were to kill somebody, we wouldn't suddenly view him as a "criminal" (although society would), but as the same person he's always been, albeit it one who did something terrible. We couldn't, then, imagine advocating for his death on the sole basis of the worst thing he ever did in his life. We could see everybody as we do our brother, if it weren't for social conditioning that asked us to think of certain groups of people as "criminals," "terrorists," "gooks," "ragheads," or any other epithet useful to serve the ends of people who don't have our best interests in mind. If prisons are a form of social control, then "criminals" are mere means to an end. (And, yes, the scare quotes are meaningful.) Do "ragheads" exist? Did "gooks"? The answer, of course, is both yes and no.