Try this one:
The police come knocking at your door. You open it. They start saying, excuse us, we've got some bad news. Did you know that this guy is dead? Isn't that terrible? The funny thing is that we've got some hair and some blood and some fibers that look awfully like your hair, your sweater there, and maybe even your blood. Would you mind telling us how you got those injuries on your face? And we'd like a DNA sample. So where were you on Tuesday night? Here all night? Got a roommate who can prove that? No? Well, we're going to case the neighborhood and see what anyone else can tell us. Maybe they've seen this guy around. Maybe they've seen you. And then, if you throw a punch, because you're a guilty son of a gun (which is a pun here, maybe), they get to arrest you.
Hell, sometimes it seems like they can arrest you for anything.
See, I can sling the lingo if you want me to sling the lingo. I don't know Miranda but I do know how to waltz Matilda. Miranda's the one who starts in with rights to remain silent, rights to attorneys, rights for this, rights for that.
Right?
Right.
Wrong!
This is my house.
We're not in that jurisdiction anymore. This is my jurisdiction, my diction, my dictation, my dictatorship (perhaps, if only, one can wish, and this is a small view of the long stack up in the home office, forever the dirty work for me), and your jurisprudience is less prudent and more purient. So your jurispurient or maybe just jurisimprudent and thoroughly accused self is obliged due punishment.
See, this is how it works. Consider: social contract, animal kingdom, religion, even physics: for an action, a reaction. For benefit, further benefit. For misdeeds, punishment. Animals will, at times, exercise a kind of "corrective violence." Cats are prone to it, scratching their keepers to get them to stopandquitandstopdoingthatforever. And it works sometimes. If the keeper is clever.
So what that means is that if you've done something, we're going to find out, because we're clever like that. So don't do the crime if you can't do the time.
And it's more than time going on in there. They called them "penitentiaries" when they wanted the prisoners to be penitent. No one calls them that anymore. That was a nod to rehabilitation and divinity. It's just jail.
Jail, gaol, prison, the box, the cooler, it's got a thousand names, and go ask the warden for a thesaurus and get some more. If he'll let you have a book, that is. You might tear the pages out, tie them together, throw the paper rope out the window, bend back the window bars, slide down the paper rope, and have an escape.
That's why there aren't many windows.
That's also why we took away your belt. We don't want any hangings.
Don't joke for a moment that you've been framed. We got your hair, we have your DNA, we can place you at the scene, you've got motive, we have a witness, you returned to the scene, you fit the profile. And if we ask the right questions, maybe we'll even get a confession out of it too. It's a matter of pressure and leverage.
Just like physics.
Raskolnikov thought he was above the law. The law came crashing down. I'd also recommend Kafka's stories on prison, imprisonment, punishment, and crime. Those will scare you straight.
If this doesn't do it first.
I'm tired of the lack of law and order in this City.
You fought the law. And the law won.
[ooc: In the criminal justice system, very offensive offenses are considered especially heinous. In the City, the dedicated deities who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as The City Deities. These are their stories.
..........................................................doink-doink.]