The War on Crime Is Enforcing Safety or Insecurity?

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, MILITARISM, ASIA--PACIFIC, EUROPE, 24 Jun 2013

Federica Riccadonna – TRANSCEND Media Service

Comparison between Nepal and Iceland

Nepal’s crime rate is considered high from many perspective: safety perception, cases of violent crime such as murder, rape, robbery, homicide rate.[i]On the other side, Iceland has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world.

On what basis does this comparison lie? It lies on the assumption that inequalities are a major cause of violent crime, and a lower perception of safety in one society. In other words, equal societies like Iceland have a low crime rate than unequal societies like Nepal.

This paper aims at exploring the link between war against crime and safety. Safety should be considered in a broader sense, not only measured by absence of violent crimes’ cases, but including economic, social and cultural safety. We can understand this concept by linking it with violence. As Prof. Johan Galtung, who is a pioneering academic of Peace and Conflict Studies, developed his understanding of the concept of Peace in antithesis with its contrary, violence.We can understand safety in its broader meaning: not only absence of direct violence, but also including a structure and a culture supportive of a holistic, all-dimensions living. Economic uncertainty like unemployment, poverty and social uncertainty like discrimination are part of this concept of safety. It includes food security, health, education, opportunities. In more equal societies, opportunities are available for a majority of population (In case of Iceland, we can say for almost all) whereas in more unequal societies, disparities in opportunities are wider. In this paper I have analyzed crime, safety linked to inequality or equality in two societies: Nepal and Iceland.

The main thesis of this paper is that the war against crime does not solve, and could even feed those types of uncertainties and increasing insecurity, inequalities and affecting social safety in the long-term,feed frustration and anger among those targeted that can eventually explode into violent conflict in a social composition. Why? Because focusing only on tackling crimes works as a double-reinforcing cause: It targets only the smoke of a fire without facing the root problems or causes that lead to crimes, and therefore increases uncertainties by deepening inequalities.

Let’s analyze both one by one:

1. Misunderstanding the root problems;

2. Deepening inequalities.

In this regard, the example under analysis is trying to highlight this framework by considering only few aspects linking crime and inequality. Someone can call it simplification. But despite this simplification of the issue, it will enable us to have an overview.

Elaboration:

One main question arising in this paper is: is low crime rate an effect of enforcing security measures such as increasing the number of police and enacting tough laws,  or it is a cause of  a more equal society that consequently leads to a more safe and secure environment?

In the light of comparison between Nepal and Iceland, low crime rates are likely to appear in more equal countries, giving back the idea that violent crime has deeper roots in the ones having stricter or tougher laws fighting crime. That is only targeting the peak of the iceberg.

In Nepal protests, demonstrations and disruptions, which are also known to attack vehicles, continue to occur. Various political groups organize “bandhs,” or general strikes that force the closure of all businesses and disrupt vehicular traffic. The rate of such strikes which is a form of political violence, also enforced by violence or intimidation and threats, is high[ii]. It can be a sign of frustration among different classes and groups because of discrimination, inequalities, unequal access to resources, lack of recognition and representation, as has often beenthe casein Nepal.

Armed criminal groups in Nepal are also reported to be very active, particularly in rural areas and in Tarai (the plain region that borders with India). Such groups have been engaged in murder, kidnapping, extortion, abuse, and threats of violence, often with impunity.

Therefore, law and order in Nepal remains a concern.Nepal is a very vertical society, with a diverse composition of its population. There are over 125 ethnic groups[iii] with distinct culture, language, social structure and economic status. Structural and cultural exclusion of different groups by dominant has been common. Some of its groups are discriminated in the social, economic and political life. We can take the example of Tamang community, mentioned during one interviewed I had with a practitioners in the field of human rights.

Tamang, a Tibeto-Burman speaking ethnic group, inhabit the hilly and Himalayan regions of Nepal, according to the National Population Census 2011, they constitute 5.6% of Nepal’s population and form the third largest ethnic group of the country. But this community is subjected to systematic socio-cultural, economic and structural discrimination as many other ethnic and indigenous groups in Nepal.

In this framework,the interviewee stated that if we look at the prisoners population, a disproportioned majority are Tamang. Does it mean that they are racially or ethnically inclined to commit crime? Or as the blacks in the USA overrepresented in prisons due to a mixed combination of laws, police practice, economic and social conditions and UNEQUAL opportunities which leads them to be both a common and more persecuted target of the state action as well as be more likely to commit crimes in such an UNEQUAL environment?

In USA more than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives[iv].

The accelerating rate of incarceration over the past few decades is just as startling as the number of people jailed: in 1980, there were about two hundred and twenty people incarcerated for every hundred thousand Americans; by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to seven hundred and thirty-one. No other country even approaches that. In the past two decades, the money that the states in the USA spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. It is called a “carceral state”.[v]

Some studies show the link between increased imprisonment, in duration and in frequency, and stricter criminal law, as the most effective way to cut crime. Is this true, sustainable in the long term? I do not believe, and I am not the only one. The financial and emotional burden is unbearable as well as counter-productive in the long term. One counter thesis of this is that those studies are based on false arguments, since they were conducted during period of growth and strong employment. Consequently, this reinforcesthe thesis that there is a indirect proportional relationship between equal and increased opportunities and crime rate.

Inequalities:

Gini index—the most widely used measure of inequality—of disposable incomeand consumption expenditures in Nepal, for example, increased from 0.30 in 1984 to over 0.38 in 1996and further to 0.47 in 2004[vi]. A quarter of the population lives with less than US$1 of daily income, remains on economic growth and employment generation.

Rising inequality in Nepal resulted from different causes, from the culture that places the lower caste and ethnic groups as well as the rural population in a highly disadvantaged position[vii].Gini indices of per capita consumption expenditures of 0.33 in India, 0.34 in Indonesia, 0.42 in Thailand, and 0.45 in China are much smaller than those of Nepal (0.60). These estimates would put Nepal’s inequality ranking close to those of South Africa (0.58), Zimbabwe (0.50), and Botswana (0.63), the most unequal countries in the World(UNDP 2006).

The most equal countries are Japan, Sweden, Norway and Finland, and the most unequal are the US, Portugal, the UK. Crime in Japan is lower than in many other first world countries while the latter countries are famous for high rate crime. Iceland, the other term of comparison, is analyzed as a country where “there is no economic classes, it is mainly a equal society. Virtually there are no perceived difference among upper, middle and lower classes in Iceland.”[viii] As mentioned, in the research byUniversity of Missouri, they found only 1.1% of participants identified themselves as upper class, while 1.5% saw themselves as lower class. The remaining 97% identified themselves as either upper-middle class or lower-middle class or working class. So there are no economic tensions, since there are no flagrant inequalities.”

For all those reasons I came to the conclusion that inequalities feed conflict, also in the form of violent crime. Crime as a response to worse economic or social conditions, justify to one’s conscience as a way to getting even, to improve one’s condition.

Misunderstanding the roots of crime: Inequalities and uncertainties and not  racial or mental predisposition are factors that lead one to becriminal. Stricter law will only target the smoke, without solving the root conflictthat sooner or later will explode violently, as violent crime.

Wilkinson and Pickett argue in their book The Spirit Level[ix] that social structures that create relationships based on inequality, inferiority and social exclusion must inflict social pain, and that we need to allow a more “sociable” human nature to emerge. Reducing inequality, they suggest, is “about shifting the balance from the divisive, self-interested consumerism driven by status competition towards a more socially integrated and affiliative society”.

In order to understand the second argument of this essay, we need to explore the negative effects on inequalities and also in the long term on rate crime of stricter laws without solving the basic conflict:

Deepening inequalities:

Incarceration and stricter laws and practice for imprisonment will affect and increase inequalities by amplifying the problem supposed to be solved: crime.

From a sociological perspective, they are called criminogenic effects[x] of incarceration: the experience of Incarceration can affect one’s life in different way, by experimenting violence, discrimination and denigration, brutalized by prisons, overcrowded,

Prison can also act as school for criminals since young inexperienced men go in contact with experts and clever criminals in a way that is not possible outside.

The severance of Ties to Family and Community has numerous consequences on well-being and integrity of one’s life.

The Post-incarceration Consequences are many all well documented references: labeling, diminished employment opportunities in an already unequal labor market, effects on families and offenders and communities as a whole, and effects of racial disparities as a part.

At the end of imprisonment and experience with that system, it will be more likely to commit crime by those coming from dangerous, discriminative, unequal environment.

Conclusion

So this paper ends with a question: To fight crime and ensure safety in our societies, would it be better to put in jail all possible criminals since they comefrom potential dangerous environments or to solve the root problem, solve those inequalities and give dignity to all groups composing a multiethnic country as Nepal?

In this paper I affirm that inequalities and unequal economic, social and cultural environment lead easily to increased frustration and anger. Both explode in fragmenting the social fabric, trust and solidarity by contributing in escalating crime and affect safety in society. Equality is the long-term and sustainable way to decrease crime rate and enhance public safety in the long term.

NOTES:

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 24 Jun 2013.

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