Skulking Permit

Like William Tenn's TIME IN ADVANCE, Sheckley's SKULKING PERMIT (December 1954) is a meditation on penology and the entirety of the criminal justice system, framed as lighthearted satirical science fiction. The furthest human colony of the far-flung Terran Empire is subject—as are all the colonies—to periodic inspection by Headquarters, and Sheckley's settlers are prepared to show that they, no less than their Terran ancestors and overlords, have established a satisfactorily advanced civilization. Every culture, they reason, needs a series of roles satisfactorily enacted, and that means not only pillars of society but criminals too...every human society has a lawbreaker. Sheckley's protagonist, reluctantly employed to fill that role and given a skulking permit for those purposes, does the best he can granted the pressure of circumstance and his own low capacity for criminality.