Habitual Employment of Punishment

"As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime."

- Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

The Katoomba courthouse is situated along my route from the station to the hospital. Thus I shouldn't have passed it this morning, as I had a clinic day. However, the brain didn't work like that ;-) It wasn't until I had reached the courthouse, taken a couple of shots (though not very optimistically, given the dreary conditions), and started off again, that I realised I needed to be going in completely the other direction. :-p

Due to the dreary day, I didn't take anything else. I had a play with it on the train. I did a B&W conversion with red filter 100% green about 70% and blue about 25%. I added a duplicate layer set to overlay at about 75 opacity, sharpened, and cropped a little to 3:2.

I think someone must've told Wilde about casually pepper spray everything cop ... Or in fact about pretty much any of the authorities trying to stamp out dissent in the form of the various Occupy and related protests.

Large version here.

Unprocessed version here.