We live in a world where books and shows about successful serial killers, heists, and other crimes are mainstream, and we don’t miss a beat when we hear a title that sounds like a literal how-to guide for criminals - like How to Get Away With Murder. It’s a world where we seem to draw a clear line between a story and a plan, a fantasy and a threat.
We see stories and shows as fiction, or as art, or as an exercise in creativity and freedom of expression. This is not true everywhere, particularly not for those who touch on political issues, with books or movies or TV shows potentially landing people in prison.
The organisation PEN international tackles this issue, and works to defend literature and human rights. But in the UK and US it is very unlikely that you will be imprisoned for writing stories. Here, perhaps the closest we get to thoughtcrimes are ‘inchoate offences’.
The word inchoate means underdeveloped. Accordingly, these are crimes where an act hasn’t, or hasn't yet, occurred. It is the category of offences including things like attempted murder, encouraging and assisting the commission of a crime, and conspiracy to commit a crime.
Conspiracy is any agreement between two or more people to commit a crime – and this is what Valle was originally found guilty of and sent to prison for. It wasn’t writing horrific fantasies that landed him in prison, it was the emails he sent colluding with someone else to plan a crime.
But, would he really have ever gone through with it? Does it matter?
