Disqualifizieren - to Disqualify

The threat of disqualification from sporting events is enough to make most competitors stick to the rules like Loctite Superglue did my little finger to a door handle. False story. And bonus points if you got the 90’s product reference. Although according to their website, they’re still around. Not quite the giants of the industrial adhesive market they were fifteen years ago, but, well, I suppose domestically people are choosing to break faces over picture frames and china - the NHS is free, after all. So why isn’t the threat of disqualification from society enough to make us, or more specifically, scummy people, stick to the rules like Loctite Superglue did my index finger to a Tasmanian devil? Also false. Well for one, sporting events are watched by thousands, if not millions of spectators both in the stadium (the thousands) and on TV screens around the world (the millions), let alone scrutinized by scores of score-keeping officials. So using, for example, a car in the 200 metres, or a catapult in the shot put wouldn’t be that easy to get away with. Gary from Chelmsford nicking a car from the high street or catapult from some local museum (assuming they have them in Essex) on the other hand, would be, at best, watched by one or two twitchy-curtain pensioners and a grainy CCTV camera. Hardly a global audience. Plus if they were caught, Usain ‘Catch Me In My Subaru’ Bolt would probably be suspended from athletics far longer than Gary would spend behind bars. So either we need to make being busted for crime massively more likely, or introduce much stricter penalties if they get caught. Increasing the number of adjudicators watching criminal proceedings would be one idea. But police cost a lot money and one of them has a tendency to kill one innocent person at one protest, so they’re all bad. A better option would be to get thousands and millions of spectators by making the entire country into one gigantic stadium where we can all sit and gawp at crime as it happens everywhere. Unfortunately that’d end up costing even more than the extra police, so an even better idea would be to install CCTV everywhere and grant free access via the web and digital TV to an enormous global audience. If Gary thought Mr Wang in Beijing could be watching as he heaves his medieval rock-chucking device down the road to his fence (the bloke buying his stolen goods, not the wooden wally thing in his garden), I’m sure he’d think twice. Assuming he had the cognitive capacity to do so.
If these methods don’t work, the other possibility is harshening our punishment of criminals. Extending sentence years isn’t going to help - it just ends up costing tons more in the long run. The death penalty is just too harsh, as cretinous as Gary and his scumbag peers are. Mild torture and humiliation is the route I’d take. My main issue with Guantanamo Bay was the inmates weren’t, on the whole, tried or convicted of anything. Being held without charge and forced to listen to Eminem in a darkened room for weeks on end is simply despicable. Being held, charged with car theft, drug dealing, burglary or rape, with a mountain of supporting evidence, forced to listen to Eminem in a darkened room for weeks on end is simply hilarious. Although we ought to substitute the CD for something a bit less Gary-friendly. Captain Beefheart or My Bloody Valentine would do the trick. If straight humiliation is more your thing, strip them naked, paint ‘I’m a massive bummer’ all over their body and parade them around town in an open-top bus. It’d work and be brilliant, I’m sure of it. Oh, and it was thumb to Loctite bottle lid, in case you were wondering.