Let those without sin …

The block is abuzz with news of the likely arrival in a few weeks of Paul Hoffman, an American formerly living in Sanur, but now ensconced in Polda remand jail.

Hoffman, 57, is accused of a string of robberies of convenience stores over the past few months which netted him a grand total of 16 million rupiah (around $1,200).

His MO was to stake out an isolated Circle K or Indomart late at night when only one staff member was working, and then enter wearing a surgical mask and motorcycle helmet while wielding a kitchen knife.

A poorly paid, young and often female convenience store clerk is hardly likely to put up much resistance in such circumstances, and Hoffman would make off with the till contents — never more than a hundred dollars or so — and help himself to a bottle or two from the spirit rack before escaping on his scooter.

Police had plenty of CCTV footage of the suspect, and he was caught two weeks ago staking out another store, wearing his robbery clothes, with the knife stowed under his motorcycle seat.

An open and shut case.

Hoffman’s arrival is anticipated not so much because of his crimes, but rather because of his prominent membership of the Bali Crime Watch group.

While the name may conjure up the image of avenging vigilantes seeking to make the island’s streets safer, they’re actually a collection of keyboard warriors who meet on Facebook to dispense Internet justice.

I was a member of the group until April 2015, when I was banned in the wake of the executions of two of the Bali Nine members.

It was started with non-judgmental aims as a means of centralizing crime reports to see if patterns emerged. That is usually the case here — a string of house robberies in one particularly area, a spate of bag snatchings on one particularly street, a rash of rip-offs by one particular merchant or nightclub.

Its unapologetic aim focused on crimes against expats or by expats, but was largely for information purposes only.

It became a surprisingly popular group despite being “closed” (it currently boasts a membership of over 26,000) but swiftly lost direction — particularly when an early stalwart, Scott Dobson, was arrested and found himself jailed for 18 months on a GBH charge. Those he had made managers of the group ejected him.

I was banned because of my somewhat outspoken views on the fate of the Bali Nine, and in particular the two lads who faced execution. I’ve always been against the death penalty and also argued for more lenient sentences for drug offenses — at least nobody can accuse me of hypocrisy.

Some of the comments people made from the comfort of their living rooms were truly vile. People without a shred of humanity or empathy were baying for blood and one comment in particular stood out:

“I’ll volunteer to pull the trigger.”

No prizes for guessing who posted that helpful contribution — Paul Hoffman.

Scott, who in keeping with my tradition of nick-naming fellow inmates along literary lines I’ve dubbed Wyatt, after Gary Disher’s eponymous Australian anti-hero, is due for release next week, but has carefully monitored the group he founded by quietly rejoining as a sock puppet.

Hoffman was particularly outspoken when talking about Wyatt’s arrest — “he got what was coming” — but there is scarcely any foreigner in Block B who escaped his venomous barbs.

The “Natural Born Killers” seemed to draw his particular wrath, and he bayed for blood, telling all and sundry that they had it easy in Kerobokan, were allowed to mingle freely and were unrepentant.

All utter nonsense, of course.

Wyatt is currently carefully trawling through Hoffman’s posting history, and we plan to present him with a print-out of his efforts when he finally makes it to Kerobokan.

My arrest, apparently, was greeted with the riposte “they should throw the book at him”, so I intend going through the library to find the weightiest tome on the shelf, and offer him a taste of his own medicine. I’m thinking Shantaram, a prison redemption tale and monumental waste of over 1,000 pages, but perhaps it would be better to keep the tone more highbrow and chuck Ulysses his way.

Those who were close to Andrew and Myuran are incensed at the comments Hoffman made at the time of their execution, and will no doubt have some very frank exchanges with him when he arrives.

He can certainly expect no favors here. He’ll never get a room, and I reckon we’ll make him sleep cheek-by-jowl with the paedophile whose castration he called for. I foresee a sentence made up of lots of menial cleaning duties.

Those monitoring the Bali Crime Watch page say the most outspoken and poisonous members have actually rallied around him, saying he should be forgiven because he had fallen on hard times, had mental issues, had a drinking problem.

It’s nice they have gathered around one of their own, but you have to wonder why they couldn’t spare an ounce of that humanity for a stranger who could equally have compelling mitigation.

The irony, of course, is that the keyboard warriors will continue spouting their bile whenever a foreigner they don’t know happens to do something wrong — and banning any voice that takes them to task.

Hoffman, however, despite facing a somewhat frosty initial reception, is likely to be treated far more kindly in here, and with more humanity than he ever offered us.