Inequality Corrupts; Great Inequality
Corrupts the whole Social Order.

INTRODUCTION.

Prevention of crime is more humane and less costly than the

correction of crime. In this first part of a two-part set, I will

look at both conservative and liberal efforts to control crime

within the existing structures of racism, growing class inequality

and, as well, a violence driven patriarchy which both degrades and

brutalizes the men and women caught up in it. In the second part,

scheduled for the next issue of this journal, I will draw the basic

outline of preventative criminology; one which minimizes punishment

and maximizes both human dignity and social peace.

We know the structural features of low-crime societies. These

are listed in the Agenda in the final section of this series. The

short version of that agenda is that if we are to reduce crime,

social policy must be informed by the kind of human rights and

human obligations set forth by the United Nations Universal

Declaration of Human Rights or some version of it. If we are to

reduce international crime...in both its political and economic

dimensions, foreign policy concerns in the Western countries must

be informed by the same human rights and human obligations. The

boundaries of social space must expand to include all peoples while

aggressive nationalism must be reduced.

It is a transition to a peaceable and praxical society which

is the proper agenda of an affirmative criminology. It is the

agenda Items intrinsic to a Democratic Socialist Program for crime

prevention, crime control, and the repair of crime which will, over

the long run, help each child to realize the fullness of his/her

humanity; which will provide each adult with the social means to

remain a respected and esteemed member of the human species. This

is the proper study of criminology as we enter the 21st Century.

There will always be cases of murder most foul; there will

always be theft and the privatized use of public goods. Rape,

arson, bribery and embezzlement will be with us to the end of human

history. But these are variables; they increase and decrease with

the state of the social order. Many of the suggestions from

Conservatives and Liberals are helpful as a short term response to

crime while most of the Democratic Socialist proposals are designed

to lower crime rates in the long term...well into the 21st Century.

Let us consider the major elements of the Conservative and Liberal

Programs before we turn attention to that of Democratic Socialism.

THE CONSERVATIVE PROGRAM

For the most part, the Conservative policy for crime is to increase the

capacity of the state to detect, catch, prosecute and imprison

street criminals. Conservatives tend to advocate a Retributive

Justice model of crime policy: the worse the crime, the more severe

the punishment. And Conservatives also endorse an equality

principle: people who commit similar crimes should get similar

punishment.

These two features of Retributive Justice are:

1) a social psychology oriented to pain and

2) a philosophy of corrections oriented to linear calculations of punishment.

But pain elicits ever more pain while complexity in the dynamics of

crime defeat rational calculation of the effects of punishment.

In the real world, allocation of status honor, guarantees of

economic security, and institution of friendly interpersonal

relationships are far more effective in avoidance of crime than is

the infliction of pain. And, in the real world, complexity weakens

and loosens the causal efficacy of pain in controlling behavior.

Still, faith in pain and in the efficacy of scalar increments of

pain to prevent crime informs the Conservative Agenda.

The Conservative Agenda includes:

*use of search and seizure of evidence

*standard sentencing for each kind of crime

*weakening the rules of evidence

*use of prison sentencing

*use of military discipline in jail and prisons

*lengthening time in jail and prison

*reducing the use of probation

*use of electronic monitoring during probation

*the use of capital punishment

*turning jails and prisons over to the private sector

*turning prisons into factories: use of convict wages to repay the victim.

*three strikes and out: life imprisonment for a third conviction.

The point of all these policies is to make it easier to catch

criminals, arrest them, try them, convict them, and keep them in

dehumanized prison routines while reducing the costs to the tax

payer. At the same time, Conservatives tend to accept the social

factors which promote street crime and other forms of crime. Low

wages, unemployment, commercial-driven impulses to own and display,

individualism, competition, as well as machismo with its alienated

power and alienated sexuality.

These suggestions parallel practices in China and Taiwan, both

of which use strict discipline for youth and adult offenders alike.

Inmates in Chinese reformatories and prisons are given uniforms,

heads shaven, divided into groups of 10, and drilled in military

marching. Each group elects 2 leaders and is supervised by staff.

They are given political and vocational education. Youthful

inmates get up to 10 points per day for good behavior and are

released when they earn 1800. Self criticism is required. The

more militant conservatives in the USA applaud the regimentation

and strict regimes of the Chinese Communist prison system.

Conservatives point out that 95% of the people in prison are

repeat offenders. Most have a long, long record of theft,

burglary, violence, and refusal to participate in alternative

programs in the jails and prisons which have them. Given the

present social matrix out of which crime comes, jail and prison,

close watch, and other Conservative tactics make sense.

At the same time, most white collar criminals are not policed; so they are

seldom caught and seldom recorded as thieves. Organized criminals

have layer after layer of low-level hirelings which protect them

from a retributive criminal justice system. Corporate criminals

have extensive legal services available to them with which to

defeat the link between crime and punishment.

The Conservative Agenda, with all its progressions of pain simply do not work in the

social context in which most criminals operate.

As the Left-Realism of Jock Young and his associates suggest, some Conservative policies will have to be adopted and retained in the short term.

A decent society cannot permit professional criminals to prey on its citizens.

Experience from former socialist countries show that change toward a low crime society come quickly with social justice...and disappears as quickly when market dynamics are re-introduced.

On the other hand, as Stephanie Amadeo, a criminologist at Central Michigan

University, points out the more different is jail and prison life from civil life, the

more punitive it is...and the less it rehabilitates.

The American Civil Liberties Union warns that this most

punitive criminal justice system is expanding its net of social

control. At the same time, a new genteel fascism of high tech

control is developing using electronics, chemicals, psychology and

sociology is pushed by Corporate liberals; these genteel control

tactics are accepted, sometimes reluctantly, by Conservatives.

HIGH TECH CONTROL The yearly costs of keeping a person in jail and

prison runs up to $20 thousand or more per prisoner. The costs of

technical control runs in the hundreds of dollars per person per

year. The prison population has doubled since 1980.

Growing costs of imprisonment with growing size of the inmate

populations strain federal, state, and county budgets. One can see

why those who believe in control as a solution to crime are

becoming interested in chemicals and/or electronics.

Self and Social Control.  As we talk about these technical solutions, keep in mind

that such solutions are hostile to the human project. They tend to do

an end-run around the self system; they locate the sources of human

behavior in external agents or impersonal constraints. In real

life, the control apparatus needed to guarantee compliance would be

huge and intrude into every aspect of every person in every social

institution in which the opportunity for theft and violence exists.

The costs of technicized control in both monetary and in human

terms are increasing year by year and the efficacy diminishes month

by month.

Chemicals The use of chemicals to control behavior is a growth

industry. Hyperactive kids are put on Ritalin. Depressed

women are controlled by tranquilizers. Elderly people are

sedated to keep them manageable.   Large numbers of those alienated

at the top and at the bottom of class, status and gender hierarchies manage

that alienation with the help of street drugs...also a growth industry.

The advertizing industry spends billions to promote the idea

that chemicals are the appropriate way to control every behavioral

problems as with every medical problem.

The court system also has looked to the chemical industry to

control sexual offenders. There are chemicals which depress the

sex drive. Sex offenders are given probation and parole on the

condition they visit a clinic, take the drug in the presence of a

medical person and have the visit recorded and countersigned by

that person.

The use of chemicals in the food of prisoners to control mood

and sexual appetite has been employed in European prisons for many

years. Many American jails and prisons have tried to control rape

and homosexual behavior by chemical means.

Drug Testing About 25% of the largest corporations in the USA

have adopted drug testing as part of their employment process.

IBM and other such firms require urine testing of job

applicants. Some require periodic and surprise testing.

American colleges require their athletes take random drug

tests. The professional football, basketball, and baseball leagues

have adopted some from of chemical screening of its athletes. The

Olympic organizing Committee routinely tests for some 25 chemicals.

The Attorney General of the US, Edwin Meese (who resigned as

a result of five separate investigations for corruption) called for

drug screening of every person arrested for any crime. Meese said

that he looks forward to the day when such chemical screening is

routine.

Brave New World You can look forward toward

a great expansion of computer applications in the C.J.S. as

well as in the private justice system. Some of the uses are

in place and more will be adopted as the technology

'improves.'

As you go over the uses of computers below, be sure to keep in

mind that the technological control of crime is not a good

substitute for the social justice prevention of crime...unless one

wishes to keep the structures which produce crime.

--The centralization of crime data.

Police will have instant access to information about any

given person they stop. Computer terminals will be

portable for foot patrol as well as car patrol. Already

the National Crime Information Center of the F.B.I. has

criminal histories on 104 million people.

--Scanners will read out data from chips implanted in cars as

they pass busy intersections. Stolen cars, wanted persons, and traffic violators will

be checked against the registration number of passing traffic. Suspects can be

stopped at check points. 

Scanners can be developed to 'read' and identity convicted felons as they enter and

leave stores, shops, factories, offices and agencies.

--Electronic banking transactions will be monitored to provide

information on the location of wanted persons, of

delinquent fathers, of suspected drug dealers as money

transactions become ever-more computerized.   Voice and eye-prints are

quick and accurate checks on identity; DNA slower but even more accurate.

--Traffic fines, paternity payments and other legal costs can

be deducted from private banking accounts electronically.

--Personal histories of each citizen will be computerized.

Crime data will be entered in each one and instantly

available to any police department in the country.

--Convicted prisoners will have computer chip implants which

will identify, locate, and perhaps, immobilize them upon

demand by police personnel.

--Money will become electronic. Security will be tightened

for money and credit cards.   Non-linear coding provides unique

codes unbreakable without high tech equipment.

Direct mugging, robbery and pocket picking will disappear.

--Chips will be implanted in appliances, autos, jewelry and

other property. Scanners in stores, homes, repair shops,

pawn shops and police stations will have instant

information about ownership.

--Home security systems will be computer based with direct links to satellites and Security Firms.

Persons will be identified by scanners which will read ROM chips

carried by everybody. Unauthorized persons will be identifiable immediately.

Law and the Game--Defense and Prosecuting attorneys will computerize each

others' modus operandi in the effort to win cases.

--All court proceedings from preliminary hearings to final

verdict will be automated and permanently stored.

Verdicts and sentences will be set by computer parameters

within which Judge and Jury must operate. All appeals

will be automated as will recommendations.

--All case law will be computerized allowing attorneys and

judges to instant access for precedents and dispositions

in law of all offenses.

--Probation and parole decisions will be automated with strict

controls on revision of policy by judges and Commissions.

--All corrections personnel will be trained and retrained by

'user friendly' computerized manuals. Hiring and

promotion will be based upon success in finishing such

courses.

--All casework of police, prosecutors, social workers, and

other corrections personnel will be computerized and

judged by computer software.

--Prisoners will be assigned to a computer project. Each day

the prisoner will have to enter and respond to software

accounting systems as a condition of privileges. US

prisoners will become more sophisticated in computer use

than most people in the rest of the world.

Computerized data centers in banking, communications,

insurance, corrections and credit reporting will become targets of

pretheoretical crime as people begin to take the computer as the

class enemy rather than the structures of capitalism, bureaucracy,

racism or gender privilege which use computers for the purpose of

reinforcing such structures.

Electronic Prisons The following states use electronic

bracelets to monitor compliance with court sentences

restricting prisoners to a home or work area:

California Kentucky Oregon

Florida Michigan Texas

Georgia New Jersey Utah

Illinois New York Virginia

More states are considering electronic monitoring. An ankle

bracelet sends a signal to a monitor linked by phone to a police

computer which records those times when a prisoner leaves an area

defined by the strength of that signal...usually 500' of home.

The bracelet has a small transmitter. The signal from the

transmitter is monitored by a device attached to the phone in the

prisoner's home. If the prisoner goes outside a circle about 500

feet in radius, the phone device automatically dials the police

computer and informs it of the loss of signal. The phone device

has a built-in protection from tampering.

Such a system costs several thousand dollars but can be used

over and over again with other convicts. It costs about $5.00 a

day to operate; convicted persons can be released to work to pay

the local business or police agency which operates the 'service'.

The State of Texas experimented on brain implants. Small

transmitters were implanted in the brain of 9 or 10 'volunteers'

who were then monitored by a radio receiver on a police antenna.

When brain signals of the convict showed increased excitement, the

police assumed something was going down. The experiment has since

been terminated. There were too many problems and too few

volunteers.

Many corporations require lie detector tests for prospective

employees. Coors Beer company and the employees union has had many

arguments over such screening. The use is increasing as a means to

control white collar crime. Over 2 million lie detector tests were

given in 1988 to screen prospective employees and to test present

employees suspected of stealing company property.

Some corporations monitor their public places with T.V.

monitors watching for shoplifters and employee theft. Some monitor

workers to ensure they stay at their machines and are busy. The

police in some cities have installed T.V. monitors on downtown

streets to protect merchants and to discourage street people.

The companies which use computers or phones routinely check

out the productivity of phone company employees, computer entry

personnel, salespersons or middle management. The phone is

attached to a computer which monitors for key words; logs the

number of calls made; and records the amount of time the keyboard

was busy. Theft of company time is a cause for firing.

Metal scanning devices are routinely used in court rooms to

protect Judges. Jails and prisons use them to search for concealed

weapons. In Boulder county, Colorado, the court house scanners

costs about $75,000 annually to operate.

Psychology and Social Control The principles of psychology lend

themselves to a strengthening of conscious, morally relevant

behavior or...to the defeat of human volition. Some use

psychology to help control those who rebel and resist the

economic or political conditions.

The main tool in the arsenal of mind managers is behavior

modification techniques. The alcoholic, the drug abuser, the petty

criminal, the sex offender is required to submit to the process as

a condition of probation or parole.

The psychologist uses the techniques of behavior modification

in order to program an aversion to the kind of behavior which is

defined as illegal. The success rate is uneven and the ethical

questions are unsettled but the technique is widely used.

The use of chemicals and depth psychology to 'brainwash'

people has been the subject of experiments by the C.I.A. as with

the K.G.B. Such technology has not been very useful in controlling

behavior but there is a continuing interest in its potential.

Profiling has had great publicity and may have some marginal utility in

identifying serial killers but the vast majority of crime is committed by

people not much different from you and I; only their social location and

immediate circumstances may be a bit different.

PRIVATIZING JUSTICE The most recent 'radical' change in jail

and prison management involves private

profit making companies contracting to control prisoners and

probationers. The purchase of private police in capitalist

societies has long been a growth industry. Now states are turning

over the corrections system to private enterprize.

This development resonates with Conservative philosophy. They

hold that the state should leave all production to the private

sector. The private sector is more efficient and provides better

quality goods and service. There is the added benefit of freedom

and flexibility of experimentation in rehabilitation found in the

market that is not found in state organized industry.

The problems of private enterprize always remain: what about

the low profit and nonprofitable but essential goods and services?

From whom do the taxes come to pay? What about Constitutional

protections? What happens to costs when control monopolies are

established? There are many, many problems with completely free

enterprize in the private sector being in charge of public

services. A useful compromise may be private, non-profit

corrections systems.

In 1984, 28 states reported the use of contracts for housing

prisoners in privately owned work release, halfway houses, and pre-

release facilities according to National Institute of Justice data.

There are more than 1800 privately owned and operated

residential programs for juveniles sent there by courts. A private

owner operates a restricted training school for 400 serious teenage

offenders in Florida.

The Federal government has let contracts to house aliens in

San Diego, Houston, Laredo, Denver and elsewhere. Plans to house

juveniles, aliens and low risk prisoners are rapidly developing.

Private capital is planning and building jails and prisons for main

stream inmates in Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico where state law

permit them.

Contracting to private industry has long been used by federal,

state and city correctional agencies for health care, staff

training, educational and vocational training. Now the plan is to

build private jails, use the cheap labor to market goods and

services...and at the same time reduce public taxes.

Corrections For Non-Profit There is much to be said for locating

the corrections process broadly in the community. Citizen

involvement is the heart and soul of low crime societies.

Canada has used the private sector for years...mostly in a

volunteer or nonprofit way. In the USA, the use of private jails

for adult corrections is just beginning. For decades, juvenile

corrections has been contracted to private parties. New York,

Illinois and many other states send their young offenders out of

state to private 'camps' for corrections.

Howard Sapers, Executive Director of the nonprofit John Howard

Society of Alberta, Canada lists its positive aspects of the John

Howard programs:

--they set a high standard for government programs to emulate.

--they extend to areas where public funding is not available.

--They are flexible to need.

--they give impetus for humane reform.

--they provide independence from political tampering.

--they give citizens opportunity for voluntary service.

--they individualize and humanize corrections.

--they balance state programs.

--they help manage the fiscal crisis.

In the USA, Alcoholics Anonymous, Drugs Anonymous as well as

groups serving men who batter, are corrections programs which vary

widely but generally are successful prevention strategies.

Profit from Prisoners Jail and prison franchises for adult

prisoners are the newest, most controversial trend in

corrections. Many states prefer private contractors provide

for street criminals. Contractors like the captive work force

and the low wages which it provides.

However free workers in the 21st Century won't like

competition from prisoners any more than they liked the competition

from slaves in the 19th Century. Many states prohibit the sale of

goods made by prisoners. The labor movement in America realized

early on that prisoners were used to replace slaves in the South

after the Civil War.

Union leaders worked hard to get laws passed which would end

the competition between free workers and imprisoned workers. Small

business organized to eliminate competition with prison shops which

sold on the open market. As a result, most prison-made goods were

used within the prison or by other state units: hospitals, schools,

or license plate agencies.

However the fiscal crises of the 70s, 80s and 90s lead to new

ideas for using jail and prison labor to cut costs to the states.

The are several models that private capital can use to profit from

prison labor:

The Employer Model In this model the private owner

operates a firm with inmate labor to produce goods or

services. The owner has control of the hiring, firing,

and supervision of working prisoners.

Best Western, a motel chain, established a phone

reservation center inside the Women's Prison at Phoenix.

Howard Johnson's has a similar operation located inside

a women's prison in Oklahoma. Workers are paid the

same...low...rates as other reservation clerks.

Pride, Inc., operates all Florida prison industries.

The Investor Model Private investors put up the money to

start a prison industry or business. The Corrections

department assigns the prisoners and controls the work

process.

The Wahlers Company put up money and equipment for a

furniture factory owned and operated by the Arizona

Corrections Industries. It gets a share of the profits.

The Customer Model Private companies buy most or all a

prison factory produces at costs below that of the free

market.

The Walker Sign Company and Pace Industries purchase most

of the signs manufactured at the Utah State Prison at

Draper, Utah.

Control Data Corporation buys disk drives and wiring

harness from Minnesota Correctional industries. CDC

assigns its free employees to control the work process

and train inmate supervisors.

Profit from Courts Private courts franchises are growing in

the USA as the loads on public courts increase while public

funds go elsewhere. Non-profit courts located in communities

and staffed by experienced lawyers or retired judges might be

worth the experimenting.

THE LIBERAL PROGRAM Liberals tend to advocate the therapeutic

model of crime control. They do not call for a change in the objective conditions

which produce crime but they do try to respond to individual conditions, try to be

humane when dealing with prisoners and rehabilitate them.

Liberals insist upon reforming rather than transforming the

criminal justice system. Later on, we will discuss transcending

both crime and punishment.

Therapeutic model includes:

*indeterminate sentencing of convicts until judged by doctors to be cured of their alleged pathology. healthy)

*variable sentencing of convicts depending on background of the convict: age, prior record, community support.

*occupational training programs

*group and individual therapy sessions

*physical therapy, music therapy, sports therapy

*conjugal visits, family contacts

*work release time (some convicts are permitted to serve their time on weekends)

*grievance procedures within jails and prison

*inmate governance experiments

*time off for good behavior (points for good behavior are awarded in operant conditioning programs)

*better living conditions: food, privacy, personal property such as photos and radios, more space.

*inmate newspapers, library facilities, college credits for course work, uncensored letters.

These policies, however humane and sensible, do not reduce the

recidivism rate. A 1983 Department of Justice Study reported that

63% released inmates were rearrested within three years. About 40%

return to prison for the commission of another serious offense

whether they go through the therapeutic program or not.

Liberals point out that most of the people in prison are there

for property crimes. Many of these property crimes are drug

related. Jeff Riggenbach of the Cato Institute argues for

decriminalizing drug use. He says that people will not kill or

steal to support a drug habit costing $5 or $10 a day but they will

steal to support a habit costing $700 a day or more.

A USA Today editorial (Nov. 12, 1988) says that 50 to 70% of

those in prison are there because of the economics of the drug

trade. Heroin would cost about $1 a dose if it were legal.

Marijuana would sell for about 25 cents a cigarette and cocaine

would cost $2 or $3 a fix if the trade were turned over to the free

market. It is well within the logic of Corporate Liberalism to

advocate the free marketing of drugs, gambling, sex, pornography

and other practices now prohibited. These prohibitions grow out of

the religious culture of Western civilization and take the form of

cultural wars which threaten to divide Liberal and Conservative

Republicans; Liberal and Conservative Democrats.

If recreational use of drugs were made legal, the user would

be more likely to have and to hold jobs...just as those who use

alcohol have and hold jobs. There are many arguments for and

against decriminalization but the short version is that legalizing

drugs and sex would end a great deal of policing and traffic in

courts as well as reduce prison population. The arguments against

are also compelling; addictions, problems of physical and

psychological health, exploitation of children, advertizing to

increase demand and a great many more.

Alternatives to Prison Liberals tend to support alternatives to

jail and prison. Alternatives to prison are more humane, more

effective in reducing recidivism and less costly. Prison

should be the last resort; not standard practice.

Joan Petersila of the Rand Corporation reports that

alternatives to prison:

* reduced the number of repeat offenders. About 5 to 20

percent of those given alternatives were rearrested.

This compares to a 60%+ recidivist rate in those who go

to prison and then released. Of course, people selected

for alternative were better risks to begin with...but

this may not explain all the difference in return rates.

*cost about $4000 per year per prisoner as compared to

$14,000 average spent to house prisoners.

We can get some sense of how these alternatives work:

House Arrest Offenders under house arrest are required by

conditions of their sentencing to stay home for the length of

their sentence. There are four states which now use this

alternative:

Alabama Indiana

Florida Oklahoma

Boot Camp In theory, discipline is supposed to reform young

men and women who are processed through the criminal justice

system. As a foreshadow of prison life and as the first

disciplined life many young people have experienced, it does

have prosocial results. According to a PBS Report, the

Georgia program seems to be successful in reaching young men

who otherwise may not reflect on the harm they do others.  However,

Bill Farrell, University of Michigan-Flint says the research is faulty and

the programs greatly flawed.

Young offenders are put in Boot-camp style programs. There,

former military drill sergeants get kids out of bed early, put them

through calisthenics, feed them full breakfasts, run them through

marching drills and field exercises. The young people are required

to keep themselves and their clothes clean. They are required to

learn in course work and they go to bed at 10 p.m. Drugs, alcohol

or sexual activity are not permitted.

Cuba, China, and other socialist countries also use boot camp

discipline with offenders. In 1988, five states used boot camp

tactics to rehabilitate youngsters. Many more are being added.

Colorado Mississippi

Louisiana Idaho

Oklahoma

Close Watch Many states have intensified probation. The

following states sentence individuals to frequent visits to

probation officers complete with drug testing. Job

counseling and job placement are sometimes mandated by the

court. This type of sentencing works best in halfway houses.

States which use close watch are:

Arizona Kentucky Ohio California

Massachusetts Oklahoma Connecticut Maryland

Oregon Delaware Michigan Pennsylvania

Florida New Jersey Texas Georgia

New Mexico Vermont Illinois New York

Virginia Iowa N. Carolina Wisconsin

Community Sponsors A few states allow clergy, family or

friends to guarantee the good behavior of offenders. The

sponsors help offenders meet the conditions of probation and

are responsible to three states for reporting success or

failures.

California New York New Jersey

Restitution Centers This alternative has positive results for

both the offender and the victim who has some of the harm

repaired. In 1988, four states used half-way houses as

restitution centers.

Georgia Texas

North Carolina Vermont

Probation Liberals tend to advocate probation rather than

imprisonment with intensive supervision of those on probation.

There are many advantages. Under intensive supervision,

offenders remain in the community but are far from free. They

live in half way houses, report in by ten p.m., take regular

tests for illegal substances, and must find a job and keep it.

Probation is much more likely to keep family relationships

intact.

Community Service Community service involves free labor from

those convicted. In many states, convicts get alternative

sentencing to renovate churches, clean parks or highways,

build town halls, weed gardens for the elderly, recycle trash,

and work for some 120 public service agencies. White collar

criminals are very likely to get alternative sentences.

Group Therapy Group therapy is another psychological tool.

This approach has ethical advantages over

behavior modification and operant conditioning. Group therapy

involves peers who persuade and pressure the deviant to change

behavior. The therapy is, partly, at the level of conscious

discussion and dialectical transformation. That is not the case

with behavior modification.

The ethical advantage of group therapy is that the individual

can reflect on the behavior of others more objectively than on self

behavior. Emotional distance enables the group member to take a

stance against the same behavior in others which creates problems

for the individual. By urging better behavior on others, better

behavior becomes possible for those who urge it.

Group therapy is labor intensive, slow, and widely regarded as

not punitive enough. The success rate of group therapy is low.

Resolve to do better quickly gets lost as the inmate returns to the

objective conditions which promoted crime on the outside.

In terms of prison management, music therapy and pet therapy

have had good results as has have stage therapy and sports therapy.

Human Rights for Prisoners Professor Carmen Antony of Panama

(1987) has provided a series of suggestions which will help

eliminate human rights abuses in the Criminal Justice Systems

around the world.

Her recommendations begin with democratic politics in

making laws. She recommends:

--Active participation by community groups in discussing and creating laws.

--An independent judiciary

--Ombudsman or civil rights defender for all the people.

--Prohibition of the use of torture or cruel and degrading punishment for all those confined.

--Legal and procedural safeguards for all inmates in the application of rules.

--Educational programs and access to the various public media by prisoners.

--All police forces brought under the control of the civil and democratic government.

--Adequate instruction in the law and the rights of the people of all corrections functionaries.

--The means to voice complaints about police brutality and bias.

--Improvement in the selection of professional corrections personnel in terms of personal merit and bias toward minorities.

--Require justice functionaries to attend seminars on human rights along with periodic evaluations of such courses.

--Regional and International cooperation to inspect and encourage fundamental liberties and human rights.

Critique The Liberal solution only increases the size of the cycle

of those who come to prison, get decent treatment, return to

the same conditions of unemployment, false needs and

competitive individualism which brought them to prison in the

first place.

The army of recruiters for organized crime remain in the

streets of the city. Recruiters solicit dealers and customers for

the drug trade. They solicit young men and women for prostitution.

They provide the funds to protect offenders from swift and sure

capture and conviction.

The politics of despair, anger and pretheoretical revenge

return to produce more crime by ex-cons better trained in the

technology of crime and court when prisons are used to solve the

problems of crime.

THE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PROGRAM The thrust of the Democratic

Socialist program is to transcend crime and punishment by changing

the social conditions in which people resort to crime as part of

the way they survive in a conflict ridden society.

Democratic Socialist solutions are, necessarily, long term

solutions. Since the rich and the powerful established the present

systems of justice in long years of struggle with workers, women,

minority groups and customers, it will not be easy to change those

systems even if the knowledge process were perfect. Many more

struggles...and failures must occur before low crime policies are

adopted. But we can begin with the Agenda Items below.

Harold Pepinsky at Indiana University is doing some of the

most useful work in discussing the transformations of crime and

justice across history. He reviews the work of European

criminologists in preventing both crime and punishment.

Low Crime Societies From that literature, Pepinsky (1985)

identifies several structural features of Scandinavian

communities which make crime and punishment virtually

inconceivable. He builds upon the work of Nils Christie:

--Interpersonal relations are deep and rich

--Power is distributed widely

--Those who pass judgments are accountable to those who are subjected to their judgments

--Social relations are interdependent rather than dependent.

--People believe each person is part of the sacred.

--Communities should be small and tight. [Hutterites divide into new communities when they grow much more than 100 members].

--Choosing leaders by lot to reduce oligarchy.

Pepinsky adds more features from the work of others:

--Urban planning for architectural variety and integrity.

--Workplace democracy to enhance accountability and the ability of the worker to be heard. [there are 150 worker owned firms in Basque Spain...white collar crime disappears when workers own and operate the workplace].

--Popular justice in which offenders and victims work out distributive justice of the sort elite offenders get and elite victims demand. Examples are the Neighborhood Justice Centers in which victims and offenders mutually create justice on their own terms modeled after Mennonite practices in Indiana.

--Genuine self government within corrections facilities [of the sort used by Tom Murton in Arkansas prisons until the governor fired him for being soft on offenders: you may have seen his story in the movie, Brubaker]

With these ideas, Pepinsky hopes to go beyond a justice

philosophy marked by the pain of crime and balanced by the pain of

punishment. He urges instead a sociology of justice which offers

ways to obtain genuine relief from crime and punishment.

Elliot Currie (1982) has set forth a series of policy

recommendations which are excellent beginnings toward social

justice programs.

*Innovative policing tactics (foot patrols, youth patrols)

*Greater use of middle range sanctions (community service)

*Supportive community milieu...especially jobs for youth

*Intensive job training; upgrade jobs

*Stable opportunity for work

*Stronger response to domestic violence

*Services for victims of domestic abuse

*Community based family support systems: health, housing, child care

*Improved Family planning

*Paid work leaves and free child care

*High quality, early education for poor children

*Universal and generous family support

These suggestions would help lower crime rates immediately.

They would cost about 1/10 the amount that the Reagan

administration has requested for Stars Wars...or 300 billion

dollars...about what is spent of military goods and services per

year.

The USA would be stronger for the expenditure of such monies

for work and family resources than for war and military resources

by any decent system of measurement.

Along with changes in the larger society, a parallel change in

the criminal justice system is required in order to break the cycle

of crime, punishment, and more crime now produced in the CJS.

Community Organization Louk Hulsman, the Netherlands, has

suggested several ways a community can organize for low crime.

He emphasizes that the concept of community has no

geographical boundaries...in a sense we are all members of the

world community. However for purposes of community

organization, there are at least two levels at which these

ideas apply:

1. The immediate neighborhood

2. The town, city, or suburb

Among the ways in which communities should be involved in the

control of crime are:

A. Choice of the kind of crime is to be policed.

Usually police confine their activity to policing

street crime. However, some communities may want

other things policed such as pollution, noise,

price fixing in local stores, traffic patterns,

park use, or such.

B. Choice of the means to deal with crime.

Hulsman approves of feminist practice of civil

action and publicity in the prevention of rape in

Dutch communities.

Preventing rape is far more helpful to women than

arresting and convicting those who rape.

C. Victim Support.

Hulsman notes that prevention of crime should

concentrate on protecting victims as much as upon

punishing offenders. Cuba is especially good at this.

Such prosocial research helps us understand what

makes victims vulnerable; how to reorganize the

community to protect them; how to repair the damage

to their lives once done. These are designed to

prevent crime rather than catch and punish those

who are in an endless cycle of crime.

D. Community Patrols.

Many cities in socialist and Western countries have

instituted citizen patrols with good effect on

property crimes. Crime drops from 25% to 75% when

organized crime or petty thieves know that they

will be seen by someone.

Such patrols have to be city-wide and nation-wide

or they tend to displace crime to unprotected

neighborhoods.

E. Citizen Courts/Comrade Courts

The use of citizens to adjudicate petty offenses

aided by lawyers helps bring wisdom, speed, and

propriety into family disputes, petty theft,

assault and other such problems. Such courts work

well in socialist countries such as Cuba,

Nicaragua, China and some Eastern European

countries.

F. Released Prisoner Support Groups

The Fortune Society mentioned before provides a

variety of community based aid for the released

prisoner. Such help has greatly reduced the

recidivism rate in Texas, Colorado, New York and

other places it exists.

Individual and community approaches to preventive must be

matched by larger structural changes throughout the entire

society...and throughout the entire world community. All of the

five kinds of crime explored in this text arise out of the dynamics

of class, race, gender, and national divisions as well as out of

the ordinary workings of bureaucracy.

A LONG TERM AGENDA FOR A LOW CRIME SOCIETY. The most

important contribution a democratic socialist criminology has to

make is to emphasize the features of low crime societies. You have

just reviewed the work of Pepinsky and Currie who have offered some

of the most important features of low crime societies.

Judicious adoption of such features makes it possible to

minimize antisocial behavior and promote prosocial behavior. It

will be possible to reduce the costs of an expanding criminal

justice system. It will be possible to reverse the trend toward

techno-fascism. It will be possible to harness the time and talent

of millions of young people now discarded by a poorly designed

social life world.

The larger social factors which discard people must be

transformed else no justice system; criminal, civil, medical or

religious will work. Without social justice, there will be ever

more subjects for prisons and jails.

We have created a crime machine which teaches young people greed, denies them work, tempts them with overflowing wealth, which polices and imprisons them and, in prison, improves their skills and techniques for harmful behavior.

The society which denies its young the resources to become

productive citizens does so at its own peril. A first agenda item

is to invest those resources of talent and time upon young people

which now we lavish on the warfare state.

All low crime societies value their young people, devote

endless hours to their development within a labor intensive circle

of responsible adults. In low crime societies, women share the

parenting process with many other family members including fathers,

uncles, aunts, grandparents, sisters, and brothers. The point of

working with children is to build a strong, competent and prosocial

self system.

AGENDA ITEM A. THE SELF SYSTEM A stable and competent self

system embedded in a network of stable and cooperative social

relations located in a system of stable and mutually supportive

social institutions oriented to produce a just and stable community

is a better system of social control than are police and prisons.

Low crime societies foster a self system oriented to praxis.

A STRONG AND COMPETENT SELF SYSTEM ORIENTED TO

PRAXIS IS THE BEST CONTROL SYSTEM AVAILABLE.

Praxis, as a term in socialist theory, requires a balance

between sociality on the one hand and self determination on the

other. The common good counts as much as individual needs. The

whole point of meeting the common needs is to enhance the quality

of life of individuals. Under the right conditions, it is not

necessary to choose between individual welfare and society.

Praxis requires a balance between creativity and compliance.

Praxis requires rationality but a rationality located with the

limits of sociality...not a rationality oriented to possessive

individualism.

The praxis self system is composed of social identities

(Young, 1972). The development of a strong and adequate self

system requires that each child be socialized to inculcate 3 to 7

strong and stable social identities as the core of the self system.

In the past, family and tribal social identities motivate

stable and prosocial behavior. Gender identities and age grade

identities, for thousands of years, have organized prosocial

behavior. Occupational identities, inalienable from the individual

continue to be important to a strong and stable prosocial self

system.

Religious identities have been very important to most people

throughout human history. They continue to organize behavior for

most of humankind. Muslim social identities promote prosocial

behavior and discourage crime. Jewish identities do the same.

Buddhist identities and Shinto components of the self system help

produce low crime society.

Societies which permit young people to grow to adulthood

without social identities are inviting other components of the self

system to grow and develop. We may not appreciate those

constituents of the self which are not socially oriented.

Without social identities, much of the identity of young

people is based upon clothing, life style, body image, or material

possession. Indeed, capitalism promotes consumption as the core of

an adequate self in its millions of advertisements.

Some young people turn to the horoscope for identity or to

exotic religions as the social foundations in society for adequate

self systems disappear. Some young people turn to drugs and to

drug using groups for their social identities.

In order to build a self system, one needs social institutions

composed of a variety of interrelated and cooperative social role-

sets; one needs a socialization process which teaches, in

configurational ways, the role expectations; one needs a rite of

passage in which the identity is awarded to the person beyond

separation. Finally, a society needs that social institution to be

oriented to some fundamentally important task in the reproduction

of the totality of the social formation.

Most societies in most of human history have united self and

society in this fashion. It is possible to do so in the USA. But

the way we deal with young people now will not suffice to that

task.

AGENDA ITEM B MORAL DEVELOPMENT.  First we must consider the social location of morality.  To be sure, the self system is the primary location of moral sensibility and the self system cuts across all social institutions; one cannot escape one's own sense of right and wrong.

But if self and society are, in fact, twin-born, morality must be programmed into each and every institution of a society; market, work, school, church and family...not just church and family as Conservatives and Liberals would have it.

Public schools must teach values and how to clarify one's values to students. To some extent, values taught in childhood mediate behavior during the lifetime of the individual.

Children in such low crime societies as Muslim, Buddhist,

Communist China, Cuba, and Japan receive much in the way of moral

education. Children in American Hutterite, Mormon and Amish

families which take their religion seriously are protected from

crime: committing crime and being a victim of crime.

Moral Education. In a Rand Corporation study of 2500 teens,

students were asked what they looked forward to doing after the

finished school and started work (USA Today, 7 Apr. 1987:1). The

teenagers answered more in terms of what they wanted to have rather

than what they wanted to do. The first five answers were:

1. Own a car

2. Move away from home

3. Clothes

4. Furniture, appliances

5. Travel

One will note that such values are main aim of a market society.  The advertizing industry spends billions to teach children to value material possession.

A study of the viewing and reading habits of children suggests that they are exposed to some 250,000 advertisements by the time they are 6 years of age.

Moral behavior requires that we allocate resources to

inculcate values which support prosocial behavior rather than those

which promote false needs for consumption and possession.

The Dialectics of Morality Moral behavior is a joint product of

a well socialized individual and a

well organized set of social roles in which to express one's

morality. Studies of prisons, concentrations camps, asylums all

support the point that even well socialize persons engage in anti-

social behavior.

MORAL BEHAVIOR REQUIRES BOTH A STRONG AND COMPETENT SELF SYSTEM...AND...PROSOCIAL ROLES BASED UPON HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMAN OBLIGATIONS.

Putting a moral person in an immoral social setting is an

invitation to immoral behavior. Few of us can transcend the

objective social conditions in which we find ourselves any more

than we can learn to speak and live Japanese by ourselves.

Crime is suffering and the ending of crime is possible only with the ending of suffering. A criminology of peacemaking necessarily involves human transformation in the achievement of peace and justice. Such a criminology--a nonviolent criminology of compassion and service--is a way of peace.

                                Richard Quinney in Quest

Liberation Theology. Liberation theology shows a concern for

both individual morality and with the structural immorality of

class privilege, racism, sexism and authoritarian relations.

The historical concern of the major religions; other than

Buddhism, has been with salvation and personal sin. The historical

concern for human emancipation embodied in socialism and communism

has been with structural sin...i.e., the immorality of social

relations, social processes, social institutions, and social

formations.

Liberation theology, in its efforts to promote morality,

emphasizes the traditional religious concerns with the moral

development of the individual in its concept of personal sin. It

also emphasizes the concerns of socialists, communists, and others

with the moral character of social institutions in its concept of

structural sin.

The major strategic policy put forward in this text as the way

to prevent crime endorses the strategy of liberation theology:

There must be a balanced, varying, situated

dialectic between the individual's moral judgement

and the morality built into social relations.

It is not enough to put moral individuals in an immoral social

order. Nor does it suffice to build a just society populated by

amoral technicians. Indeed a just society cannot exist without

praxis orientations on the part of individuals.

The recommendations of Pepinsky, Currie and others contribute

to a Praxis; one in which the morality of social relations is given

equal weight to the moral development of the individual.

AGENDA ITEM C. A Praxis Society Cooperative social relations are

a key to a low crime society. While one must not romanticize

tribal societies...life was often short, brutal and impoverished...still tribal societies

offer us a lesson in how to design a low crime society.

Crime and disorder simply could not and did not flourish in

tribal societies (Bodley, 1985: 179). The major feature of low

crime tribal societies is that the interests and needs of the

individual seldom conflicted with the long range interests of the

group.

Excessive conflict, theft, use of force, or the privatized

accumulation and use of resources would be self defeating in a

society in which the fate of one was determined in part by the fate

of all (Bodley: 179).

A LOW CRIME SOCIETY REQUIRES COOPERATIVE SOCIAL RELATIONS

A praxis society is one in which the ancient structures of

power and privilege: class, race, gender, age, ethnicity, and

bureaucracy give way to democratic participation by all adults in

all realms of life.

Such societies empower people toward prosocial work rather

than exclude or exploit them. Such societies promote creativity,

self determination, sociality, and rationality in the means to

achieve human rights.

A praxis society requires the moments of praxis infuse policy

and programs at every level of social organization from the morally

informed individual to a morally effective United Nations.

The next series of propositions for a low crime society speak

to the structures of domination and oppression which generate so

much crime.

AGENDA ITEM D. EQUALITY. A peaceful and cooperative society

is not likely if there is great inequality in social relations.

Economic, political or social relationships

in which one party benefits at the expense of another requires

physical and psychological coercion to continue.

In slavery, feudalism, and in bureaucratic communism as well as capitalism,

those who are excluded from social life often rebel; often engage

in destructive personal and public activity.

No one person is the same as any other person nor is it

possible to achieve perfect equality...absolute equality probably

is not desirable. For low crime societies, the essence of equality

is that there is ample opportunity for any one to achieve a

position of social, economic, and moral power as well as influence

and respect (Fried, 1967:33).

Complementary to equality of opportunity is an equality of outcomes...

it well may be that some low ratio of inequality in class, status and power

can exist side-by-side with social justice...however large ratios create large

problems.

The problem of great inequality in class, status or power is

that the location of morality and responsibility is not in the

person acting but rather in the person or elite set who makes

decisions. German soldiers and American soldiers who said they

were simply following orders were right; they were. In an

authoritarian system, orders displace the self system as the

mediator of behavior.

The problem of economic inequality is that the poor with false

needs sometimes turn to crime to reunify production and

distribution. The rich often commit crime in the acquisition of

wealth; they sometimes use wealth to buy the political process.

The problem of inequality in the allocation of honor as

between ethnic groups or between men and women is that those with

high status tend to disregard the rights and needs of others;

those with low status tend to have low expectations and low

standards for themselves. The stratification of social honor in

age, racial, gender or national divisions is a major structural

defect.

IF WE WANT MORALITY, WE MUST WORK FOR EQUALITY

In social occasions distorted by power and by status or by

wealth, the mutuality of interaction is distorted. The powerful,

the rich and those with high status gain great advantage in shaping

the behavior of those subjected to their power, wealth and social

influence.

AGENDA ITEM E JOBS Full employment policy and program must

be instituted in the USA as soon as

possible. The use of unemployment as a tactic to lower wages, slow

inflation, and increase profits is unconscionable. Every person

over the age of 16 who wants to work for wages ought to have a job

available to them.

The kind of work available is most important. It must be

socially valuable, adequately rewarded, and intimately tied to the

moral and technical education of the child or the adult. Made

work, poorly supervised jobs, overpaid labor and idle hours teach

waste and contempt for work.

The stability of job opportunity is fundamentally important.

The practice of increasing or decreasing job opportunity as

economic fluctuations occur is poor policy for two reasons: It

removes opportunity from those who want jobs while it contributes

to the downside of short term depressions.

In Texas and elsewhere, unemployment checks and other grants

in lieu of jobs have reduced recidivism a bit. It makes sense to

provide enough resources to maintain some human dignity for the

released convict until prosocial work is available.

Both Ralph Nader and Jesse Jackson point out that it costs

more to keep a person in prison than in an elite university. Both

note that state funds are better spent upon young people to keep

them in prosocial jobs than upon war and the weapons of war.

Steven Box, Kent University in England, has studied

intensively the relationship between recession, crime and

punishment (1987). His work seconds the idea of jobs as a central

policy to reduce crime. Box also notes that:

** Unemployment and economic inequality only appear to lead to crime in those societies which infuse the unemployed with a great sense of failure and rejection.

** Corporate and white collar crime continue whether disemployment rates are 3% or 30%.

** Automation will continue to disemploy people. Expansion of tertiary education is helpful as a means to engross, enliven and lead workers beyond employment toward achievement.

** Jobs which are a drudgery, routine, exploitative, subject to arbitrary authority or which produce dangerous products are not emancipatory.

** Inequality of rewards between jobs has to be reduced: morally, no job is worth 40, 100, 1000 times another.

Jobs and Juveniles Jobs for young people are especially important.

In a competitive labor market, one can understand why adult

men are jealous of losing their jobs to children. One can

rightly oppose the exploitation of child labor. But young

people have a right to job responsibility and the many, many

rewards of prosocial work.

Right now it is illegal for children under age 16 to work in

some jobs. It is illegal for those under 16 to work more than 40

hours a week during vacation and 18 hours a week during the school

year. It is illegal for those in school to work after 7 p.m.

These are sensible laws to protect children from abuses of their

labor. But many children can't get jobs due to labor market

dynamics. The need of prosocial labor for children is more

important than profit concerns of capitalists.

It is of little long range value for young people to have a job one Summer and lounge

in the streets the next Summer.

The moral development of the child thrives in prosocial work.

Morality must have a social base. Education and ideas do not last

long without a social role in which to embody them. Ideas without

action is a primary form of morality...an important first step but

by themselves ideas of morality are as seeds in the wind.

AGENDA ITEM F. HUMAN NEEDS Authentic human needs be given

priority over false needs of

advertizing and profits. Expectations for essential goods and

services should be met. Expectations for luxuries and wasteful

goods and services should be moderated.

The literature on crime is saturated with statements about

'heightened expectations.' The point is made that much crime is due

to the expectation on the part of poor people for a share in the

wealth of the most wealthy country in human history.

As a policy, this concern with the greed of the working class

to the exclusion of the greed of the capitalist class is merely

special interest pleading.

A policy appropriate to the health and safety of the citizens

of a country must distinguish between authentic human needs for

resources and experiences on the one hand...and the false needs of

individuals on the other.

A morally informed advertizing industry would not create false

needs and thus, fuel crime in the upper, middle and lower class

alike. A morally informed industry would produce and distribute on

the basis of human need rather than private profit. A morally

informed society would limit advertizing to a comparison of the

technical features of a good or service rather than to its false

claims of status or sexuality.

The claim that ownership of this or that car; the use of this

or that spray; the drinking of this or that beverage makes one

a better human being is a continuing assault on the morality

of young people.

We must invent an economic system which would provide the

material essentials of life in variety and solid elegance without,

at the same time, creating the ugly consumerism, the insatiable

demands, the compulsive accumulation of Americans.

We must invent an economic system which would reward effort

and initiative without flooding the market with useless goods;

despoiling the natural resources of the world and polluting the

waters and fields of the good earth.

We must invent an economic system which connects the wants of

the individual to the carrying capacity of the earth for all of its

population...rather than generating false needs which can only be

met for a small percentage of the population of the earth.

With all its virtues, the tendency of free market capitalism

to create false needs, increase production, and waste raw materials

is too costly a price to pay for those virtues.

AGENDA ITEM G DEMOCRACY The prevention of political crime in

America requires a fundamental

improvement in the quality of democratic participation.

Benjamin Barber (1984) describes the basics of a strong

democracy in his book by that title. Instead of representative

government and all the corruption, periodic oppression and

misrepresentation which that brings, Barber (307) suggests:

*A national system of NEIGHBORHOOD ASSEMBLIES of between one to five thousand citizens. The assemblies will have, first, a deliberative function then legislative authority.

*A National CIVIC COMMUNICATIONS COOPERATIVE to regulate and oversee the civic use of the new telecommunication technology and to supervise discussion and voting on referenda.

*A CIVIC VIDEOTEX SERVICE and a CIVIC EDUCATIONAL POSTAL ACT

to equalize access to information and to promote the full civic education of all citizens.

*INFORMAL LAY JUSTICE SYSTEMS staffed by an engaged local citizenry (see citizen service below).

*A NATIONAL REFERENDUM AND INITIATIVE process permitting popular initiatives and referenda on state policy.

*ELECTRONIC BALLOTING with information-rich and interactive rich communication...under the supervision of the Civic Communications Cooperative using the advanced computer technology now reserved to the military.

*ELECTION BY LOT to local office (with pay).

*A VOUCHER SYSTEM for essential goods and services (instead of the vast welfare bureaucracies).

*A UNIVERSAL CITIZEN SERVICE program including nonmilitary options for community service

*Local VOLUNTEER PROGRAMS for the common needs and common action in such things as care for the elderly, tutoring, and block patrol

*WORKPLACE DEMOCRACY along with publicly supported cooperatives, worker owned businesses, and public services.

*A new ARCHITECTURE OF CIVIC AND PUBLIC SPACE designed to beautify and safeguard places where people meet for play, sociability, and community performances

These are visionary and Democratic Socialist proposals. They

are eminently workable. Barber documents the long history and

solid success of most of these suggestions adopted in other places

and other times.

The technology for interactively rich and informationally rich

politics is available today. It is used by multinational

corporations, by the National Security Agency and by the Pentagon.

There is no technical reason that this technology could not be put

to use for a strong democracy. There are political

reasons....democratic communications would tend to reduce the

ability of the rich and the powerful to use information to private

advantage or the use of the American state to control the politics

of other countries.

AGENDA ITEM G FROM CRIMINAL JUSTICE TO SOCIAL JUSTICE

Cuba, China, the U.S.S.R., and other socialist countries

emphasize social justice. They also do better in creating

crime-free relations (Shelby, 1981; Brady, 1982; Holyst, 1981;

Cantor, 1974).

On all the important measures of social justice: education,

infant mortality rates, gender equality, health care, food, income

equality and housing, socialist countries do better than countries

with private capital systems of production and distribution

(Cereseto, 1983; Gorin, 1983).

Organized racketeering, government corruption, street crime

and political oppression have been substantially reduced in Cuba

and China (Brady, 1981: 22). Moscow, Havana and other major

socialist cities have safer streets now than before the Revolution.

Their streets are safer by far than those in most American cities.

According to Holyst there has been a steady decrease in crimes

in socialist countries (1981: 117):

--In Poland, there has been improvement in overall crime

statistics except for homicide, robbery and burglary

(121). (Pepinsky says that crime is endemic in Poland;

it has a vicious criminal justice system)

--In Bulgaria, there has been a steady drop in overall crime

rates except murder, assault, morals and traffic offense

(121).

--In Czechoslovakia, overall crime rates increased during the

50's, dropped in the 60's, increased until 1972 and

improved since then (122).

--In East Germany there was a sharp decrease in crime the

first fifteen years of socialism and slower decline since

then. Serious crime is rare (122). The crime rate in

East Germany is about 1/10 that of West Germany.

--Overall crime rates in Hungary show a slight increase led by

homicide (but only 200 cases in 1976) (123).

--In Yugoslavia, the trend is unclear from the Holyst data but

appears low in Western terms. There has been an increase

in crime against the economy, theft of social property,

and bad checks (123).

--Organized crime and street crime as well as corporate crime

has dropped precipitously in Cuba according to

information provided by government officials and non-

government sources. Organized criminals fled en masse to

Miami at the earliest possible moment after the 1959

revolution.

And, since the collapse of the Socialist Bloc, the increases

in all kinds of crime testify to the great harm done by both free

market dynamics and by the loss of job security.

But it is not Soviet or Cuban socialism per se which creates

a low crime social milieu. It is social justice. Among the

Hutterites there is no murder, no divorce, no robbery, no

exploitation, no drug abuse, no mugging or sexual assault and there

is no poverty, no emphasis on privatized consumption as the essence

of the good life and no exclusion from the means of production or

distribution.

In Cuba, China, as in other low crime societies such as the

Hutterites, community, prosocial behavior and social justice take

precedence over profit, individualism, private accumulation, and

affluent life styles for an elite.

While the measures of street crime, organized crime, and

corporate crime show the effects of economic justice, political

crime of the state against its own citizens continues to be a

problem in most socialist countries. Social justice requires a

strong democracy as well as an adequate economy.

TOWARD DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM Sweden doesn't have anybody in the

top ten billionaires in the world.

Sweden does not have the vast inequality found in America and the

3rd world where crime rates are so high. But Sweden does offer

some ideas about how to move toward democratic socialism.

Sweden has been run by a freely elected socialist government

since the 30s...with a short and unhappy term with the Conservative

opposition. It has avoided war for 174 years. 95% of the means of

production is in private ownership. It taxes the rich to provide

social justice for all citizens:

--Free education; Kindergarten through college

--Free health care; birth through death

--Free day care for children

--Five weeks annual vacation

--1.6% disemployment

--Housing programs

--worker safety

--religious education [Lutheran]

--progressive foreign policy

--open borders to workers

Swedes do not alienate human sexuality to repressive social

structures. There is no free love; casual and exploitative sex is

viewed badly. But sex is open and uninhibited. Young people live

together but do have separation agreements in advance.

With all this concern for social justice, the class

differences in height of young people have disappeared. There is

security of job and basic needs and an easy, friendly atmosphere.

The streets are safe from violence while the officials are, for the

largest part, honest.

Per capita income is lower than in the USA, but the standard

of living and the quality of life is far higher. Free education,

health care, and good housing eliminates poverty, inequality, and

crime.

Sweden differs sharply with the USA on policy in the 3rd

world: South Africa, Central America, and nuclear arms. It

sheltered American political refugees during Vietnam. Most of its

foreign aid is peaceful help: hospitals, schools, agriculture and

forestry. Two thirds of US aid goes for weapons of war.

Sweden does have problems: alcoholism and suicide rates

compare to those in the USA. Its taxes seem high to us. The

Swedish people pay taxes at a 50% rate. There could be more

collective planning for the future.

Living Democratic lives eases peoples' violence and punitiveness, I think. Concentrated economic and political power breeds violence no matter whether property is privately or publicly owned.

                                                                    ...Hal Pepinsky

---

Chaos and Crime The implications of chaos theory for crime have

yet to be explored. The short version is that small increases in

certain key variables may produce large increases in many forms of

crime. Each form of crime has its own key variables and these

change in causal efficacy as the transition from order to dis-order

continues. I have done a bit of work in other articles which might

be a start toward a better understanding of the nonlinear dynamics

which mark criminal behaviors.

In this work, we emphasize that privatized accumulation, false

needs, racism, disemployment, and gender privilege converge to

trigger unpredictable, uncharted patterns of criminal behavior. In

order to minimize crime, we suggest new 'strange attractors' or

rather old attractors with which to obtain social justice.

Warnings Stuart Henry, Eastern Michigan University, has

warned that it is difficult to secure social justice...community

justice as he puts it...within the logics of capitalism and

privatized decision making. Henry emphasizes that collective

structures are possible within the rules and sanctions of

capitalism but not easy.

Henry looked at housing co-ops, food co-ops and computer co-

ops in America and identified three limiting conditions which must

be transcended:

1. Independent collective structures are subject to influences of the larger system. It is hard to be a socialist in a capitalist system.

2. Collective institutions are vulnerable to crisis and collapse. Private interests often trump collective needs.

3. The few collective institutions which exist cannot be expected to transform the larger capitalist institutions. Political work in the 21st century must aim to inject communal concerns into all social institutions.

There is not likely to be a revolution in the USA which makes

progressive change quickly...and the costs of such revolution are

high indeed both during and after one. The easy pathway toward

fascism, racism, and gender oppression within the context of

reactionary religion gives warning to one likely future of America.

Ways The freedom to create alternative schools, business,

churches, housing arrangements, and credit unions provide a

peaceful path toward social justice.

The basic tools of electoral politics exist to work toward the

strong democracy...the direct democracy so important to social

power. Computer technology exists to make a large scale public

sphere possible. Plato IV, Cube and the Delphi process are models

of how to organize participatory politics on a large scale.

Note: The Internet and its potential for interactively rich political discourse did not exist when this Lecture was written.   Although the potential of the internet is greatly varied and not at all clear at present [1999], still some progressive potential is clear; graduate students use their network to organize, compare benefits and support each other.  Active critique and organizing against the UN/NATO bombing of Serbia began soon after the bombing began.   Criticism of the American Sociological Society exploded after the Executive Council rejected suggestions by the Publications Committee.

The various crises in America can be linked to desire for

progressive social change: crime, poverty, inflation, pollution,

the flagrant waste of children, military spending, national debt,

disemployment and growing inequality set beside their opposites in

other nations can fuel good politics when informed by good theory.

The ability of 3rd world nations to end the parasitism of 1st

world countries is crucial to the future of democratic socialism.

Without profits, cheap food, and cheap raw materials from the 3rd

World, corporations in the 20 rich capitalist countries will have

only the middle class to exploit. The middle class is the social

base of capitalism. As it loses its privileges, democratic

socialism becomes more possible. All this assumes that American

politics won't turn fascist and militaristic to maintain these

privileges.

European nations may give us models which inspire our politics

in the USA. France, Italy, Britain and the Scandinavian countries

have had a long tradition of democracy and socialism. Americans

have deep roots and long term relations with these nations. We

trust and respect them. We might even emulate the best of them.

There is a possibility that the negativities of bureaucratic

socialism might have faded had Perestroika and Glasnost came along

earlier or had been more carefully instituted. The great harm done

to socialism by the Stalinist period might have been neutralized by

such processes. If so, the Right wing in the West would lose one

of its most powerful cards in the game of ideological control.

There are powerful lessons to be learned from Buddhist

nations, from Muslim nations, from liberation theology not now

widely available to the American public. Confined to a few sects

which distort and adulterate it, the wisdom of the East now seems

confined to academic life in America.

Opposed to the thousand unseen dangers in the 21st century is

the long march humanity has made in the past 400 years toward

better health, better systems of knowledge, better housing, better

politics, better communications and better economic

systems...better than thought possible even 50 years ago.

History is on the side of social justice and human rights. Our task is to keep it

on track in the 21st Century.

CONCLUSION Crime occurs at a product of the everyday workings

of class, race, gender, age, authoritarian and national

exploitation and exclusion from the human process. There are five

kinds of crime which tend to grow within the logics of capitalist

relations. Some are policed closely and some kinds of crime are

neglected by the policing systems of America.

There are several eight or so separate and distinct systems of

justice. Between them, they tend to reproduce the structures of

inequality while giving the appearance of equal standing before the

law. The prevention of crime is far superior to the correction of

offenders after the fact. Yet the American Criminal Justice System

is oriented to punishment and imprisonment rather than to

prevention.

There are low crime societies. We know that social justice,

enlivening religion, and humane corrections converge to produce low

crime societies. We know that it is possible to go beyond crime

and beyond punishment toward democratic socialism in the quest for

the good society. In the 21st Century, we are responsible for

giving some part of our time and genius for good politics. We have

the human right and the human obligation to work toward social

justice in the 21st Century. Each person must give her or his self

permission to do it.

Good policy, like good love, should

capture the best of the past and

move us toward a more humane future.

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