The War on Crime

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The war on crime � which way to the front?


Fear of crime and an emerging culture of control have led us to a dangerous place in terms of our social development and personal responsibility.


Something is happening here / But you dont know what it is ...


Criminologist David Garland reworked this Bob Dylan refrain to caution those making hasty assumptions about whats happened to American and British criminal justice in the past three decades.


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His recent study, The Culture of Control Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Oxford University Press) also reminds those contributing to crime control in Australia how their roles have been embedded in a perverse historical (and professional) simple twist of fate (to quote Dylan again).


Garland addresses what is arguably the most fundamental and profound concept in the psychological lexicon control.


A need for control (of self) is essential for survival, yet equally issues of control (of others) also lie at the root of the majority of individual and, as some theorists assert, corporate and cultural pathologies (for want of a better term).


Garlands study is a typical how did we get here from there story. Here being where recently a New South Wales Justice, well known for his social justice views and religious affiliations, sentenced a 1-year old man to the equivalent of three life sentences - for a crime where no life was taken. Here being where the almost universally socially acclaimed retribution was for the offender (and his culture) to be excised from the cloth of civilised society.


There is the Golden Age of Keynesian economics, which ushered in a period of post war Welfare State optimism. A time when we believed crime - even horrific crimes - while perhaps warranting punishment and quarantine for a period, in most cases would be followed by rehabilitation. And then the State would resume its care and protection of the offender/victim back in society.


Crime for most of this epoch was viewed as social in origin, the preserve and responsibility of the State. Such glitches that did occur would eventually disappear when the unfolding affluence of the great boom cleansed all the tawdry threads of the social fabric.


Law and order


Today in New South Wales, and most other states, theres a jail population which has doubled over the last 15 years, despite being relatively stable for the 0 years prior.


Weve seen the last two, and soon to be third, state election where both the conservatives and the erstwhile socialists entered a bidding frenzy on law and order. Their respective reforms appeared to be indistinguishable; exercises in who could lock up the most criminals, for the longest time under harsher conditions for the least cost.


We have witnessed the emergence of truth in sentencing (as if judges didnt know what sentences they were handing down), an attempt to curtail discretionary release (a plank in the former policy of rehabilitation).


We have shifted the focus away from the criminal as the social victim, and toward the innocent community, painted as victims of rampant out of control lawlessness and violence.


Victims of crime are represented, heard and even incorporated into the judicial process via victim impact statements, restorative justice, victims of crime compensation, and child protection registers. Some victims of crime have even had official status on panels of inmate review.


Each one of these policies has been a political winner. Advocating for criminals and prisoners, though, is not a growth industry in 1st century New South Wales.


I would contend Australia is a paid up, card carrying member of what Garland refers to as the crime complex - albeit perhaps 15 years behind.


Garland argues that, from the 170s on, the distinctive pattern of social, economic and cultural relations that emerged in America, Britain and elsewhere in the developed world brought with it a cluster of risks, insecurities, and control problems that played a crucial role in shaping our changing response to crime.


By the 80s in Australia, crime rates, at least in the populous states, were beginning to rise. With the growth of the media and its capacity to focus and engage the population on specific crimes or classes of crimes, and with the escalation of drug-related crime affecting citizens with goods to lose, the community began to feel threatened and insecure.


Towards the end of the 80s when the economic rationalist agenda was in its ascendancy and managerialism pervaded bureaucracies, the criminal justice system became more centrally controlled and open to political intervention.


Crime and criminals who for the most part had been ignored and left to the government to manage now became daily news - the other to be feared.


As Garland reports, the sensibilities that characterise this popular culture ... originate in the collective experience of crime in everyday life and the practical adaptations to which it eventually gave rise.


It is in adaptations to a social world in which high rates of crime are a normal social fact that the culture of control has evolved and led us to a dangerous place in terms of our social development and personal responsibility.


Correctionalist frameworks stress instrumentally rational, morally neutral, knowledge-based, pragmatic solutions. But they develop these modernist themes in new ways, stressing the modification of situations and opportunity structures rather than the reform of deviant individuals; prescribing situational engineering in place of social engineering.


This is a less idealistic, less utopian approach; it is more attuned to the way we live now, more aware of the limits of governmental schemes, more modest in its ambitions for human improvement and integration.


The other


Two anecdotes are relevant.


In the last week, in the course of my employment, I interviewed five men in regional New South Wales. They each had been convicted of similar criminal offences.


Thirty years ago in all probability four of these men would have been residents of institutions of one type or another; the fourth would have been living in the dress circle of the town.


In all likelihood none would have come to the notice of the criminal justice system. Of the five, four had intellectual disabilities; one was mentally retarded while another was diagnosed as being paranoid schizophrenic. The task was to actuarially and clinically assess these men as to their level of risk of recidivism, not their rehabilitative and integrative needs. These men are representatives of the other.


The structural changes that have affected the way we control crime have not occurred in social isolation.


In Garlands words, large-scale incarceration functions as a mode of economic and social placement, a zoning mechanism that segregates those populations rejected by the depleted institutions of family, work and welfare, and places them behind the scenes of social life.


We, the well off middle class, have been seduced, partially through self-interest, partially through fear and apathy, but mainly through our separation and distance.


We the policy makers, we the professionals, we the jurors and TV viewers, can from our place of distance judge, make or support decisions, views and policies that within the light of interpersonal relationship would abhor us.


The second anecdote One of my first observations working in jails was an awareness of a peculiar cultural phenomenon. I observed that, when sitting on committees deciding inmates fates, one always took care to find out where the inmate worked in the jail. This was important because if he worked closely with a staff member, you had to be careful about harsh decisions - because the inmate was known, and through this would certainly have an advocate with influence. The moral it is easy to make decisions about those we dont know, but not nearly so easy when we do - even if they are a monster to others.


Many contemporary crime control responses have been effective at reducing overall levels of crime. Jail-focused, outcome-driven penal practice, community policing, private security services, and antitheft technology are a few.


However, operating from the perspective of the other, the not known, incarcerating more and more citizens, for longer, for less reason and with little purpose, is not effective.


Perhaps it was a similar type of crime control response that landed Jesus on a cross in the Middle East some time back.





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