Some more thoughts on crime

I’ve been watching the third season of a police procedural set in Europe (which, sadly, is not as good as the first two, although it is still better than most such series set in the USA), and that led me to thinking – again - about how society approaches crime.

As I see it, the basic problem is one of security – which is more than just personal safety (to paraphrase the police, it is more than “safety of the person”), it is also having a sense of security with regard to possessions. The latter is a key part of our psychological wellbeing – we need security for our personal stuff; it is also, to some extent, part of the complex issues about most people’s motivation to work and earn money so one can have “nice things” (including a nice home). Overall, although that security can become a harmful greed, society functions better when people safe – and that includes bringing out the best in interpersonal interactions.

I’ve come across many people in the personal growth field who place a great deal of emphasis on overcoming hardship, being generous when one is under pressure, and the like: I’m less convinced of the value of that as a personal philosophy these days, and am actively anti it in the context of how society should be.

Just as people learn best under better – not harsher - education conditions, so too do the interpersonal interactions that build society foster a better society when they are conducted under more secure settings – which covers freedom from discrimination, material security, and security against crime.

There are, of course, more threats to this effectiveness of society (and thus of its individuals) than only crime.

On a large scale, natural disasters (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, cyclones/typhoons, etc) and disease outbreaks (such as the West African Ebola  outbreak a few years ago, the flu pandemic after World War (part) One, or the plague that hit Europe centuries ago) can cause devastation. However, it is possible to promote resilience ahead of such events – as we are slowly learning in response to the other largescale disaster of this age, which is climate change.

That resilience lies in having adequate resources, and adequate forethought (better preparation ahead of time in East Africa has enabled better containment of Ebola events there, compared to the West African outbreak) – which I will come back to.

I also include socially cause problems, such as wars or economic disasters (e.g., the Great Depression, or it’s lesser cousin, the Global Financial Crisis) in this category, for the purposes of this article.

On a personal scale, there are other disasters which can cause devastation: major illness – of oneself, or a love one, accidental injury or death, or financial problems (e.g., as a result of loss of a job).

Crime fits into this category of personal disaster – or potentially personal disaster, given that some crime may be relatively minor in its impact.

The impact that crime has depends on two aspects: the severity of the crime (murder is more severe than being sworn at, although both are crimes), and how prepared (resilient, to use the latest buzz word) one is.

Now, on that latter point, while one can be prepared in the sense of having insurance, just as one can have insurance and other preparation (e.g., see here) for natural disasters, one of the major issues is psychological.

If you have a somewhat naïve or overly idealistic viewpoint, and see the world as being without threat, experiencing crime may be a major psychological blow, as it undermines and even attacks your personal worldview. If you have a worldview that relies on having lots of possessions, or having possessions that are flashier (or, to choose a kinder but very subjective word, “nicer”) than other peoples’, crimes such as theft are a similar blow against your sense of self-worth.

Finally, if you experience injury, or perhaps even death (e.g., murder of a loved one or family member – and, incidentally, I have had a niece murdered, albeit one who was distant owing to my adoption and various other family events), the event will be as devastating “to the person” as any of the larger events.

The extent of that devastation, or those personal blows in general, will depend on a range of matters, such as how well prepared one is psychologically. As I write that, I think of the challenge to parents in striking a balance between teaching “stranger danger” and developing the ability to interact with newly met people to young children: there is a similar balancing act with regard to crime. I shudder to admit it, but the trite summation with regard to violent extremist threats of being “alert, but not alarmed”, is probably the most apt presentation of that balancing act with regard to crime (and is probably most difficult to achieve and maintain for those to whom we give the social duty of guarding us against crime: police – which I will come back to later).

If we are not prepared for crime, which is a failure of both parents and society, it is likely that our reaction will be harsh. We will have been made afraid and/or hurt, and thus may lash out – we will want to see those who did us wrong suffer as we did, a human, and thus understandable, but nevertheless wrong, reaction.

Why is it wrong?

Because it fails to address the true causes and thus does NOT prevent future crime, and such reactions divide society into haves and have nots who are warring under what is often termed “the law of the jungle”.

Now, at this point I will digress to emphasise that it IS important – vital, actually – that justice be done, and that it be SEEN to be done. Such is necessary for the security (including both the sense of security, and the deterrent effect – which does not apply to all crimes) of society, and for promoting the healing of the victims. I read an opinion that jail is solely about preventing harm to society, and that is utterly wrong: jail is also about punishment, healing and deterrence.

Going back to the issue of being prepared, my view is that people in modern Western societies need to be better prepared for a whole host of things, including natural disasters (where are the cyclone warnings we used to have when I was a kid in Queensland?), the possibility of personal events that are calamitous (such as accident or injury or large scale disaster or some other event – and I recall a senior engineer I knew some years ago waffling on about life planning to young female engineers, and not even thinking about the possibility of becoming pregnant: if he had, he would probably have made some glib comment about abortion), including crime.

Part of that preparation should include being given a basic familiarity with laws (especially those relating to property boundaries, discrimination, and slander/defamation), and also the purpose and mechanics of society’s judicial system.

Many victim advocacy groups are acting from the point of pain of victims, and lose sight of risks such as creating a “law of the jungle” effect - just as many human rights organisations act from the latter perspective, and do not acknowledge the very real pain and need for healing that victims of crime are experiencing (the idiotic professor pronouncing that jail was not about punishment is the pinnacle of the latter).

As a society, we need better than those two polarised positions – and that need for better tends, sadly, to be brought undone by the political advantages of “tough on crime” approaches.

I’ve advocated – unsuccessfully – for the creation of a position of “Chief Criminologist”, much as we have an expert position of Chief Scientist, to work towards giving society the better approach to crime that we need. For the rest of this article, I want to give some thoughts on what such an office could possibly advocate for.

The first is better preparation, as alluded to above. Better parenting on the topic is a key issue, and that has to include giving a truthful commentary on the causes of crime – crimes are not committed solely by people who are “weak” or “bad”: crimes are also committed by people who trying to survive, responding to having been abuse as a child (which can lead to problems such as drug addiction), people who were taught that being a criminal is “good” (e.g., that is a rebellion against authority, or the rich, or that it is part of “family first” or “look after yourself first” [both of which really mean no-one else matters at all), unthinking people acting on a dare or in response to peer influence whipping itself into a crescendo of outdoing each other, and so on.

The next topic is prevention.

There is a balance to be kept in mind here between reasonable personal security measures, and a level of paranoia that starts to harm society by impeding its effectiveness, or by promoting division (such as haves vs. have-nots – and on that, it wouldn’t hurt some haves to NOT flaunt their wealth, which I view as a deliberate attempt to belittle and thus cause emotional harm to other people).

Having made that point, preventive measures that are worth considering include:

• better parental and societal education on the topic, as discussed above;
• more jobs, which has consistently been shown to be the best measure to prevent crime;
• promoting good relationships – I’ve seen having kids has tame several criminally inclined idiots;
• allowing risk and testing themselves amongst those teenagers who need it, rather than helicopter parenting them into rebelling with their peers against all that their parents stand for (there’s a big series of posts in that topic!);
• making society fairer (i.e., more equitable); and
• reining in advertising and culture that promotes consumerism and excessive materialism – which change would also be good for the environment.

The third topic I wish to address in this section of this article is the mechanics of the justice system, which, in my opinion, requires:

• laws that are effective, being neither tools for vengeance nor based on false or divisive perspectives. It is important, when crafting such laws, to listen to experts (provided they are unbiased) about the details, and to be aware and wary of anything which may enshrine “law of the jungle” type thinking;
• police to have adequate resources and a sense of confidence free of all arrogance (a freedom which, I suspect, requires empathy and compassion), and more breaks from their work than other professions, so that they become burned out – which is something that is a harm to them individually, and also reduces their effectiveness and increases the temptation to go outside the law;
• court systems need to be truly independent (Geoffrey  Robertson writes well about that in "Crimes Against Humanity" [4th ed., which I don't have yet, here]) and adequately resourced. In addition, those going into the court system need to understand what can happen (such as “no win, no fee” not meaning you won’t have to pay anything, as you could have to the other side’s fees) and what will happen – beforehand (consider: you don’t tell someone after a cyclone to fill containers with potable water in case the water supply is cut … );
• jails – which are a deterrent for some – must also consider that they are exemplars of the rest of society, and thus must reflect decency, unless they want to portray society as being cruel and inhumane. In addition, for the long term benefit of society, including the promotion of society as being a place worth living in, prisoners must be treated well (e.g., strip searches are a form of sexual assault, and do cause suicide, and must NOT be used excessively), genuine efforts at rehabilitation (which often starts with education) MUST be a core part of the system, which MUST be free of the barbarity of the infamous Standford experiment;
• the arrogance of many individuals and parts of the system must be remedied: the judicial system exists to SERVE society and make both society, and the world the society exists in, a better place – which is not done by being unreasonably demanding of respect to the point of subservience, nor by harshness mis-portrayed as “strength” (although firmness is required), nor acting as an agent of vengeance.

And finally, to get a sense of perspective on this topic, consider this article on why Superman was wasting his talents.