Purge

I was surprised to learn some of the actual details behind the universe of the franchise of The Purge.  Two movies so far, one released this weekend, are based on the premise that a once-a-year Purge allows any criminal activity to go unpunished.  In the first movie, Ethan Hawke and his family have to endure a siege of his home during the Purge. (Home invasion movies appear to be all the rage, too, which can be reasonably considered a sign of the Crisis.)

It's worth noting - as has happened with other end-of-the-world movies - that it is set in the 2020s, which is to say at the peak of the Crisis as predicted by Strauss & Howe. A previous post noted that it appears writers appear to set dystopias roughly when when they don't expect to be alive, 80-100 years after their birth year. In this case, the writer/director was born in 1969, so this is earlier than that indicator says. Perhaps he was going along with the crowd, perhaps he's a Strauss&Howe fan.

(There's a quote in the movie, "Home again home again, jiggity-jig," that was also in Blade Runner, set in 2019, suggesting an intentional reference to that time.)

It's surprising that The Purge was set up to handle (in-universe)  the scourge of homelessness. Coming as it did in the wake of Occupy Wall Street, the marketing (at least) suggested that it was more about keeping people equal, by force if necessary.  That is, if you are a jerk, you're in trouble when the Purge comes - in more trouble if you are a rich jerk.

The article goes on to talk about some of the tricky legal aspects of it. Most of them are matters of timing: What if I make a threat to kill someone before the Purge starts? What if I shoot someone but they don't die until after the Purge ends? What happens before the police get back?

The simplest answer would seem to be: What happens in the Purge stays in the Purge, what happens outside is not the Purge.  This would avoid massive criminal conspiracies (organized before the purge, they are still criminal) and ensure that people don't let effects go on outside the purge, helping to stop activity on time (you don't shoot anyone at 6:59, because if he dies at 7:01...) Prosecutors might feel justified in strictly enforcing the timing, as well, and going after anyone who flaunts the timing in the slightest.