We begin this little jaunt with an article about crime:

• Pilot project aims to protect cars from petty thieves from, of course, the CBC

Upon further examination, we find that the project doesn’t protect cars; rather, the idea is to use bait cars to catch petty thieves. (What happens to the petty thieves once they’re caught remains somewhat obscure. I suppose many of them will be sent to jail for a short while, and some of those will decide not to continue their criminal careers upon release.)

In any case, the bait car programme seems to have cut down the rate of auto theft rather significantly:

Vancouver police say the number of stolen cars has dropped by 40 per cent from two years ago, thanks in large part to the bait car program.

I heartily approve. However, we should keep in mind that this is not “protection”, it is rather enforcement and deterrence. While this programme may reduce the number of petty thieves who think that breaking into cars is a good way to get cash, it does nothing to prevent a petty thief who has decided to break into your car from doing so.

This is an important point, and it deserves repetition. Many programmes that are intended to reduce crime are touted as “protection”, but they are not. Protection is a specific thing: a house may be protected against a forest fire, for instance, or an individual against an attacker, but protection must always deal with specifics. Laws against antisocial acts — murder, for instance — do not protect individual people. (You may convince yourself of this fact by examining a newspaper.) What they do is deter the goblins from committing whatever pops into their heads, with varying degrees of success.

There is a great deal of enthusiastic discourse about crime and the prevention thereof. This would all be easier to discuss if we could bring ourselves to say exactly what we mean, rather than what sounds good.