Zero Tolerance: How Judge Dredd predicted the future of policing

Extra Edition: What can a bloody, violent, horribly funny comic book cop tell us about policing in the real world? 2000AD comic’s Judge Dredd began in 1977 as a brutal satire on law and order for delinquent kids – and then Dredd’s world of militarised police started to come true. Is Dredd a warning of the future or a manual for how to oppress a society?

Lifelong Dredd fan Andrew Harrison talks to Michael Molcher, author of I Am The Law: How Judge Dredd Predicted Our Future, about Hayek, Voltaire, the Apocalypse War, policing by consent, Crime Blitzes, Stuart Hall, and Judge Death as a model for policing.

(Yes, this episode’s not for everyone. But what’s the point of having a podcast company if you can’t talk about what you love, eh?)

Image by Mike McMahon.

• “Dredd’s a Rorschach test. You can tell a lot about someone if they’re saying ‘yes, we need Dredd on our streets’.”
• “Dredd arrived at the time of Dirty Harry and The Sweeney, a time of copaganda… He’s an incredible predictive warning of the law and order endgame.”
• “The Judges are the culmination of a police state… The administer everything from welfare to warfare.”
• “The steamroller of law and order is reaching its destination… The last of those pesky rights are being eroded.”

Written and presented by Andrew Harrison. Producer Jet Gerbertson. Assistant producer Kasia Tomasiewicz. Lead producer Jacob Jarvis. Bunker music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. Group Editor Andrew Harrison. “Hic! It’s Jedge Drudd!” THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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