Solutions to reduce crime often involve the increasing of enforcement services. I can see the logic behind such an approach however in reality it appears as if it were more akin to attempt to douse a fire by shooting at it. I would categorize crimes as sociological and physiological. Sociological crimes are those committed by people as a result of their environment. Often it is poverty that encourages crime as a solution for people to provide for themselves and their families. This is not the only cause of sociological crimes, sometimes it is not absolute poverty, in that the individual may not be able to provide a means of living, but a more relative poverty in which standards of living within the larger society are significantly greater than they are able to obtain. It is not that people, who commit these crimes even though they can make ends meet, are any greedier than any other person. It is more a combination of feeling let down by the larger society, and therefore more justified in their actions, and that they simply have less to lose than those with the higher standards of life by committing crimes.
Sociological crimes may not be economically motivated at all. Take the example of prison inmates who will routinely attack known informants. This is an inevitable consequence of their environment, it is an evolved survival mechanism. The environment in which inmates live is different to those of a free person and so their ethical and moral codes change to suit that environment. Essentially, in prison society the law prohibits snitching and the punishment for the crime is a beating from any available inmates. This society law is in the best interests for the whole society of inmates in the same way that a law against any sort of violence towards another person outside a prison is in the best interests of that society as a whole. The main difference between the two societies is that outside of prison society, laws are written down and systems of trying people are formalized, where as inside of a prison the opposite is the case.
Other less extreme examples may be found within smaller societies that co-exist within a larger society. The larger society is usually a country in these cases, and the smaller ones could be an area like a “rough estate or project” or a crime syndicate or even a board of directors. Each society will have different codes that have come to exist in order that the society is advantaged, and some of these will make certain “crimes” in the eyes of the larger society acceptable in the eyes of the smaller society. Most smaller societies will not find any need to turn to crimes and will just differ in codes of social conduct and tradition, but a few, such as the given examples, may polarise their morality enough that they may begin to commit crimes without remorse as they too feel justified in their actions. In both the cases of the poor and the socially extreme, it is not that they lack morality that leads to crime, but a change in perspective that then morally permits certain crimes.
Families and friendship groups are the smallest kinds of society and these also may give rise to criminal tendencies dependant on the circumstances of these small societies. A wealthy family who live in a nice area and mix with good people is less likely to produce criminals however the nature of the family life, rather than the larger local societies in which they exist, may still lead to criminal behaviour. Examples where abuse exists are statistically more likely to produce criminal offspring. Each kind of society in which we exist, from the very smallest to the largest, will offer us new perspectives on social interaction and conduct. The further from the norm of the largest societies best interests one gets, the more likely that some criminal behaviour will be considered morally acceptable within that society. One cannot address the reduction of sociological crime by looking at the whole nation as a single society, one has to look to improve the condition of all societies contained within the larger, from the family to the city to the county(/state) to the trade unions and so forth. By improving the condition within a rough estate you may reduce the chance of that estate producing criminals but that does not stop the friends, family and occupations of those living in that estate from potentially encouraging criminal behaviour, nor will such an approach help any other estate. Reducing crime must occur by making changes to systems and conditions across the board.
I have not yet discussed physiological crimes as the solutions to them are outside the scope of this essay. I would define physiological criminals as those who have some mental condition which causes them to struggle with morality, society, interaction, empathy or emotions. When aspects such as these are missing from a person they are far more predisposed to commit crimes as they simply do not understand why they should not commit them or care about the consequences. I am not suggesting that by having any degree of the afore mentioned deficiencies that criminal behaviour will result, only that the chances are increased. This is similar to sociological crimes in that poor social conditions will not ensure criminal behaviour, only increase the likelihood of it. There are far less physiological criminals that sociological ones and most of the former will also be influenced by aspects of the latter. In present day you may be able to differentiate the two kinds by where they are imprisoned; the sociological criminals in normal prisons and the physiological criminals in mental institutions. The reason physiological crimes are outside of the scope of this essay is because the solutions to them are either eugenics for future generations or physical alteration for the current generations. Neither of these has pleasant connotations nor do we posses a full understanding of how the brain is different in these individuals such that they may be “fixed” by eugenics or by medical operation. We wait upon science for a solution to the purely physiological crime and so for now the best we can achieve is to reduce the number of sociological or part sociological crimes using social engineering.
There are two methods which should be used in combination to reduce the sociological crimes within a large society such as a nation. One relating to how crimes are punished while the other relates to the whole of society and all it's subsidiary societies. To describe the consequences to the individual for committing a crime I should like to introduce two categories of crime. Unlike sociological or psychological crimes which are defined as a causal effect the new types of crime are based on their impact. A crime can be a personal crime or a social crime in that it can have an effect
on a specific individual or group of individuals in the case of personal crimes, or it can be a victimless crime that damages society as a whole in some way as per the social crime. Clear cut examples of both kinds could be a mugging for a personal crime and vandalizing a phone box as a social crime. I am also quite fond of the term “economic crime” for the social crimes as another way of being able to define them is when you are able to show the cost of that crime in purely economic terms. No amount of money however can undo the damage caused to a rape victim, one of the most severe examples of a personal crime.
The line between these two examples of personal and social crimes is very hard to draw. Having a brick thrown through your window may be fixed with suitable compensation but how does it amend the feeling of security that one might lose, even their neighbours may suffer in this regard. The jury is a human mechanism that is able to make analysis on specific situations which a legal code cannot hope to have covered. The jury is there to judge guilt or innocence on the ambiguous cases. It seems therefore reasonable that a jury could also be responsible for the determination of the category of the crime in unclear cases, whether it be a personal one or a social one. The reason for needing to clarify this point is due to the differing nature in which each is “punished”.
I have put punished in quotation marks as I believe the term to be rather vindictive. By my own definitions of the causes of crimes, they can only be the result of social conditions or mental conditions and this should act somewhat in defence of the perpetrator. My aim in a legal system is to have a macroscopic effect of reducing crime rather than an individual effect of punishing a crime. Certainly the ramifications for committing a crime would not be to the advantage of the perpetrator however they would not be intended in a vindictive, spiteful or vengeful manner. My aim with suggested “punishments” are designed such that they are to the overall net advantage of the whole society. In the case of social or economic crimes the solution is reasonably easy. These acts cause negligible personal harm and are not a threat to the members of society. Rather than incarcerate the perpetrators of these crimes at great expense to society in conditions where they cannot really give anything back to society it would be in everyone's best interests to place some social fine upon the perpetrator greater than the sum of the damages caused. Such a fine could be levied on earnings, and scale with them such that they still have incentive to perform to their best ability within the society in which they still have most of their freedom.
A mechanism like this would reduce the costs incurred by a penal system to societies advantage when a social criminal was convicted. Another modifier however is required such that these kinds of crime in general are to the advantage of society, not just when a conviction is made. This additional modifier is required because the Nash equilibrium will not be in the correct position for utopian design if it is left out. Society would still lose out economically to crime and it would still naturally exist at some level. Let us say the conviction rate for vandalism is ten percent and that the damages caused by someone was a hundred pounds it would be necessary to charge the fine at some quantity above one thousand pounds. Greater than the cost of the damages over the conviction rate for crimes of that type (and economic magnitude) is the required formula to ensure that social crimes are to the advantage of society and that conditions in a game theory analysis of crime ensure a minimum number of people participate in it. This could be a particularly financially crippling approach in crimes with very low conviction rates and may result in the impossibility of repayment, which in turn upsets the mathematical basis of the solution. There are several ways to negate the personal problems, these however serve as suggestions rather than requirements. These will tend to further upset the mathematical basis of the solution which can either be remedied by inclusion in the fine generating formula to account for those losses in some other cases or simply by ignoring them as the system does not have to be perfect in order that it provide advantage to society.
Personal crimes are generally more serious and pose a greater threat to other individuals in the society. The very possibility of such crimes is often enough to reduce peoples freedom as they may be unwilling to act in certain ways for fear of becoming the victim of some personal crime. For this reason it is still important to be able to segregate those who commit personal crimes from the general populous. Although harder than with social crime, it is still possible to ensure that most of those who must be removed from the free society can contribute to that society. This cannot however be to the overall net advantage of society, even if an economic advantage is gained there is no available mechanism to undo or compensate the emotional damage a victim may suffer.
I do not wish to go in to a detailed description of how a society could best segregate the more violent criminals as there are many suitable options each with their own pros and cons, and likely many more I have not considered. All I shall say on the matter of punishing the perpetrators of personal crimes are some general pointers that seem sensible to employ in most systems. First and foremost there should be, where possible, the potential for segregated criminals to contribute to the larger society. This happens to a very small extent in some prisons presently but not in a way that comes even close to covering the costs of running those prisons. This is because logistically it is hard to generate useful work while conforming to the other requirements of a prison. Economies of scale seem the most obvious way to increase the efficiency of work done within a prison. Another way to increase the efficiencies of labour are to provide incentive for those labours. The direction I am heading in with these assertions is a more tightly controlled society for those criminals who the larger society desires the absence of. Such a society would have tight border controls instead of prison walls, it would have an economy and industry, it would likely have some form of marshal law, but it would not unnecessarily remove the freedoms of those required to live there. The industries of this “prison society” would trade with the larger society thus providing mutual benefit, however taxes upon industries within the prison society would be marginally higher to ensure it paid for itself. There are many areas to explore regarding this idea which I shall have to devote a separate essay to at a a later date entitled something riveting such as “possible mechanisms for optimising a penal system”. A clear advantage of a system as similar to the larger society as possible is that it would adopt a similar ethical code, which will help with the next requirement.
The second requirement of this segregated society for violent criminals is the capacity to re-integrate with the larger society. This could be after a sentence has been served or based upon an individuals personal development. The former is easier to implement but may not be the best answer in all cases such as those violent individuals who show no signs of not repeating their actions. The latter however requires a lot of human resources and would need to be done effectively else it is not worth doing. It may well be the case that inmates are eligible to re-enter the larger society but choose not to based on the life and friends they have made in their new environment. Without the potential for re-integration there would be no acceptance by society that it had failed the individual as much as the individual had failed society. It would be hypocrisy to base a system on a logic that accepts society as the cause of most crimes (not only by having made laws in the first place to afford a term to describe “crime”) only then to deny criminals a chance of freedom within that society.
The third requirement is simply an acceptance of the various kinds of criminal a society wishes to exclude. All of them may have committed crimes which are unacceptable to other members of society but they will likely need different accommodation based on their individual tendencies. Most sociological criminals can be trusted to live and work with relative freedom in a large area, much like any other area of the larger society, in order than the are able to contribute most back to society and are punished least for their failings in the larger society. Of the two kinds of criminals who cannot be trusted with much freedom, one is the physiological criminals who may need exclusion from all people but who may also need special catering for. These individuals will likely end up in high security mental institutions. The other kind are the most angry and unrepentant sociological criminals who continue with dangerous criminal behaviour after their conviction and removal from society. These people will not accept the rules of any society and need conventional incarceration, much more akin to how the higher security prisons in the western world are now. The hope is that these latter two kinds of people will be in the minority of criminals and so minimal provision need be made for them, at minimal cost to society.
Crimes have been divided into two categories such that they may be appropriately accounted for. Social crimes have been dealt with in an economic way to ensure that society gains net advantage when they are committed. This approach draws heavily on the assumption that the majority of choices are made based on some understanding of the odds surrounding the potential pay off. A similar economic approach is used to deal with personal crimes however the exact mechanisms behind the solutions are up for debate due to the added complexity resulting from the need to exclude these criminals from the larger society. That concludes the “punishment” section of this essay and I have spent rather longer than I would have liked, saying less than I feel I needed! I originally asserted two methods by which a society can hope to reduce crime and spent a long time detailing aspects of punishment which may seem to dwarf the following section which is intended as the main mechanism with which a society can reduce the crime rate.
To illustrate this mechanism I am going to use an example found in chemistry. The molecules dinitrogen tetroxide (N2O4) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) exist in an equilibrium with one another. This means that two molecules of NO2 will periodically form into a molecule of N2O4 and then periodically revert back. An equilibrium position exists between these two possible states which details the likelihood of a shift in a direction occurring for any molecule on average and which tells you how much of either molecule you have in a given mix of many such molecules. The value of the equilibrium position can be altered by changing the conditions within your mix of N2O4 and NO2. If you were to increase the pressure exerted on your mix then you would shift the equilibrium such that a higher ratio of N2O4 exist compared with less NO2. I think this system works in exactly the same way with criminal tendencies, if NO2 represents criminals and N2O4 represents non-criminals then the aim is to find the aspects of your society which relate to pressure in the example and increase them. In both society and the chemistry example, more than just one factor effects the equilibrium position. By using all factors in combination you are best able to shift an equilibrium.
The theory is that when you have asserted what conditions in society alter the equilibrium of criminals to non-criminals you are able to make significant enough changes to practically eradicate sociological crimes. There are some serious problems with this suggestion in that with the chemistry example there is only one system, where, as we have already asserted, with the larger society there exists also many smaller societies. Each of these societies having different priorities and different circumstances will ensure a variety of ethical codes, and so conditions which may reduce criminal behaviour in some spheres may have the reverse effect in others. Homogenising society is an abhorrent idea however it can only be advantageous to the larger society if all members are in agreement as to the moral validity of the law. The goal should not be homogeneity, but rather maximum ethical variance within the confines of the law, which in turn suggests that the less restrictive the laws, the greater the potential for ethical (and therefore cultural) variance.
I shall touch on a few aspects where obvious changes can be made to society that would reduce sociological crime by shifting the equilibrium away from criminal behaviours. The reason for only a brief description of a few factors is because the whole social system should be constructed with this principle in mind and to describe how each and every aspect of society may help in reducing crime would be both tedious and arduous. A more sensible approach is for me to make reference to that particular advantage when I discuss those aspects of society. The scope of this essay is more of a theoretical approach to crime reduction rather than a complete description of how that may be achieved.
The first, most obvious and most significant aspect of society one could alter with the intent of reducing crime is the wealth gap. By raising the conditions of the lowest wealth with welfare and increased minimum wage you will reduce the number of economically motivated sociological crimes. Raising the lower bar of wealth will serve not only to reduce absolute poverty but also relative poverty, as the lower bar will be closer to the upper. I am not against the idea of lowering the upper bar the further reduce relative poverty and therefore further reducing crimes motivated by relative poverty. It is not as simple a solution as it sounds as one cannot just raise the level of wealth for the poorest members of society, any attempts to do so will have serious economic and social ramifications. This is mostly a challenge for economists and so possible routes towards raising the lower bar of wealth levels will be discussed in my economic essays (theses “essays of which I speak so often are starting to feel like the hydra's heads, each time I complete one I create a need of writing two more!).
Opportunity strikes me as another example where sociological crime could be reduced. By increasing social mobility, providing an equally good education to all of society, and offering a meritocratic employment policy another section of motivations for crimes can be removed from the equation. By finding the right conditions in areas such as these few it may be possible to apply the right “pressure” on society such that the ratio of criminals in that society reduces naturally. If we return to our chemistry analogy to compare alternate methods of reducing crime such as employing more police, making more arrests and convictions and building more jails we would find a distasteful result. If we took a sealed bottle of N2O4 and NO2 and attempted to individually remove the “criminal NO2” molecules without changing the equilibrium conditions, all that would happen is N2O4 molecules would split to make more NO2, replacing those removed. The only net effect of such a process is to reduce the overall contents of the bottle, the ratio of contents will remain the same. In other words, convicting individual criminals does nothing to reduce the overall crime rate. Even if you caught all the criminals new ones would come into action to replace them.
I must apologise for having taken such a long time to say little more than; improving society is the only way in which we will reduce crime. It feels like for the record this essay at least calls for me to state my position on the death penalty – which is against, however I am not sure my reasons for this position are of any particular interest...
No comments:
Post a Comment