This is the Central Scrutinizer

It was about this time that someone came up with the idea of Total Criminalization, based on the principle that if we were all crooks we could at last be uniform to some degree in the eyes of The Law.

Shrewdly, our legislators calculated that most people were too lazy to perform a real crime. So new laws were manufactured, making it possible for anyone to violate them day or night, and, once we had all broken some kind of law, we'd all be in the same big happy club, right up there with the President, the most exalted industrialists, and the clerical big shots of all your favourite religions.

Total Criminalization was the greatest idea of its time, and was vastly popular. Except with those people who didn't want to become crooks or outlaws.

(Frank Zappa, Joe's Garage)

661 new crimes - and counting:

It's not only old-fashioned criminals who have been in the government's sights. People who weren't considered criminal until the turn of the century have found that their "inappropriate behaviours" have been outlawed. Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, has asked each government department how many criminal offences it has created since May 1997. The Ministry of Defence hasn't replied yet (I suppose it's been busy), but the rest of Whitehall has admitted to inventing 661 crimes. As Hughes points out, Labour home secretaries of the past, such as Roy Jenkins, strove to reduce the number of criminal offences -- by legalising abortion and homosexuality, for example. Not so Straw and Blunkett.

Many of their new laws conjure up an unnerving picture of a Britain on the edge of anarchy. What, for instance, explains schedule 26 paragraph 18 (4) of the School Standards Framework Act 1998, which made it a criminal offence "wilfully to obstruct an inspector conducting an inspection of a nursery"? Had kindergarten teachers locked their tots in the classroom and refused to open the door? Or armed themselves with Paddington Bears and beaten the inspectors senseless? Section 3 of the Transport Act 2000 criminalised "the provision of air traffic services without a licence". Until then, presumably, the clear and present danger of demented radio hams directing transatlantic flights into Gatwick hotels had flourished unchecked.

Arrests for all offences proposed:

Police in England and Wales could be given powers to arrest people for minor offences such as graffiti or litter. ..

The government is also considering allowing police to test anyone they have arrested for drugs, regardless of whether they have been charged with an offence...

Police could also have the power to fingerprint drivers at the roadside, as well as at police stations.

(The job of the Central Scrutinizer is to enforce all the laws that haven't been passed yet)