Thinking way, way outside the box, Britain’s Labour government has decided to reduce the country’s prison population by decriminalizing… well, by decriminalizing crime. According to the Daily Mail, arrests for a whole series of offenses—including theft, burglary, assault, drug possession, and sex with a minor—will now be left to the discretion of the arresting officer, who can let offenders off with a warning. Possibly “arresting” isn’t the term I’m looking for.

Criminologist David Green said the policy lurch reflected an “anti-prison bias” on the part of the government. Britain’s elite, bed-wetting class hates to get all judgmental about those who adopt an alternative, criminal lifestyle, almost as much as they hate building new prisons. As a result, convicts with mandatory life sentences have been released after as serving as little as 15 months. The new policy solves the problem by redefining it as a non-problem. Don’t the rest of you start getting any ideas, though: penalties on law-abiding citizens who take up arms to defend themselves will still be stringently enforced. The Chicago Boyz have some thoughts on the subject.

In related news, the Brits have also acknowledged that they can’t even deal with a lowly rodent* poaching on their vegetable gardens. How did these people ever conquer one-fourth of the world’s surface in the first place?

*Yes, I know that technically, rabbits are lagomorphs. It’s called “poetic license,” okay?