i don’t, on the whole, find many kinds of crimes sordid, just sad, and sometimes a little pathetic, in the original sense of that word. what is sad too, is that there is so much of it, notwithstanding that it gives us work.
**there was a causing hurt with weapons file on my desk a few days ago. fights involving knives seem so much worse than firearms (which in singapore you cannot own anyway) — a bullet, as vimes said, can go anywhere (it’s harder to shoot straight than you think) but steel is bound to go somewhere. in knife fights — the up-close nature of combat, the knowledge that the knife is an extension of your arm, the immediacy of the resulting wound, the conscious, wilful act of slashing at someone (especially across the face) — seem especially gruesome — for there is something more primal about them than shooting from a distance (though that too, i suppose, contains its own horrors — the chilly detachment of shooting someone might be worse precisely because of the lack of connection between your act and its consequences, like julian’s trolley cars and the difference between pushing someone to his death and pulling a lever to electrocute an anonymous someone in the next town.)
**the requirement of permanent disfigurement in determining whether there is “grievous hurt” (attracting a higher penalty than simply “causing hurt”) only applies to injuries to the head and face. even very severe scarring of the body, legs, arms, etc will not fall under the definition of grievous hurt, but even relatively minor scars to the face (a cut to the nose, for eg.) will, provided it is permanent. so if someone attacks you with acid and splashes that on your body, that would only be causing hurt, but if you strike someone and leave a 2 cm laceration on their face and that scar is permanent, that theoretically would attract the offence of causing grievous hurt.
**also, i had not seen an autopsy report before this week.
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