A Grave robbery?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,2763,1637455,00.html

A man steals a dead baby’s identity. He gets a passport, a wife, a job. For over twenty-years he lives as aristocracy before a chance passport check blows his cover.

It’s pure tabloid heaven. But apart from bored journalists – who the fuck cares? How could a sensible person believe someone deserves to be banged up for 21 months for borrowing the identity of a dead kid? Is having the same name as someone a prosecutable offence these days?

Obviously not, or a whole lot of George Smiths or Gemma Wilson’s would be in deep shit. So the problem lies elsewhere. The problem, according to sentencing judge Adele Williams is that of ‘false identity.’

In this case the courts seem to have talked themselves around to believing that identity is a name you’re given. Something someone else slaps on you like a label, irrefutable, unchangeable and basically outside of your control. Which is bullshit.

The one thing we can be sure of is identity is malleable. Depending on who’s asking I’ll identify myself by my work, or my relationships, or my nationality, or the colour of my hair. All of them are fractals of identity. More importantly they are basically all constructs. Ok, I didn’t choose to be born in the USA, but how I define myself as an American is entirely my choice. I was also born brunette. But I decide on the shape and shade of my hair.

The accused in this case decided the ego prop he needed to get through life was a name and a title, so he started calling himself Christopher Edwards, Earl of Buckingham. Okay, he wasn’t (the real Christopher Edwards had died age 8 months). But what’s the harm in pretending? He was, officially, jailed for making a false passport application – but was it really? He may have invented a title, but the person who carried that passport was still him. There wasn’t some mysterious Other lurking beneath the title, just a person who – by all accounts – led a pretty average, respectable life.

Ripping off someone’s identity to empty their bank account is one thing; polishing up your life story with a few fibs to lend it a little glamour is another. And if the courts decide to make a habit of jailing people for doing so they’d better start building more prisons. Quick.