Why is crime so prevalent in our society?

What is happening in communities in our own country and around the globe as more and more cases of criminal activity are brought to our attention by the media? Is it that the media is focusing on crime because they think this is what society wants to know and therefore will sell more newspapers and guarantee more viewers and listeners? Catastrophic events also get attention and finally they too become routine and uninteresting. In addition to crime, tornadoes, floods, tsunamis, fires, murders, shootings, deadly accidents, environmental disasters, wars and other conflicts seem to fill our news media on a daily basis.


Why all this preoccupation with crime and catastrophic events that fills the daily media? The reason could be fear - a fear that misfortune might someday fall on us. Since 9-11 everyone has been made more security conscious and fearful of his or her environment. There is the realization that bad things can happen to good or innocent people. It is just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A matter of fate but now the odds have increased because it is happening more frequently or is it just being reported more frequently? In either case the fear has increased - real or unreal. The prevailing notion of terrorists seems to be, attack innocent people and thereby call attention to your cause. In other words, a cause is more important than innocent human life. What does that say about a system of values held by some people?


Another reason for our preoccupation with crime could be a loss of trust in the competence and integrity of our institutions to protect us. Governments have a primary duty and responsibility to protect the public. In a democratic society citizens hold their governments responsible for their welfare. For the most part, governments do respond to the needs of constituents. However, because all needs cannot be accommodated, there is always some criticism that specific needs are not met and eventually a creeping cynicism that government does nothing to solve the problems of ordinary people. Government needs to be seen as responding to a majority of human needs. This phenomenon is very evident currently in the United States and the government's response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Many people of the Gulf region are suffering due to a loss of their livelihoods and recreation resource. They automatically look to their government to protect them from these events and to resolve the problem. However, the problem is so enormous and the solutions so complicated that big government cannot respond quickly enough. It is obvious that the President of the United States, perhaps the most powerful individual in the world, cannot bring all the resources available to him to solve the problem quickly before more damage is done.


Dr. Fred MacKinnon, a respected Deputy Minister of Social Services in the government of Nova Scotia and an architect of the provincial social welfare system addressed social work graduates at Dalhousie University 30 years ago and admitted:

 "There is very much that is unfair, unreasonable and wrong in our institutions, our personal relationships, and in the way life impinges itself at certain times on particular individuals". (The Chronicle-Herald, May 30 – June 6, 1980 as re-reported in the Nova Scotian June 6, 2010).

 It is interesting to note that Dr. MacKinnon with his experience as a long-time civil servant in the human resources and social welfare field, was encouraging and inspiring new graduates to look at our institutions and relationships in a critical way with the expectation that they were not perfect and all needed to be improved or re-invented.


So, the system always needs to be reviewed and improved. Its an incremental adjustment of the system not one giant change that will solve all our problems. Change occurs when we have new knowledge that allows us to propose new solutions that we expect will be successful.

What can we do to mitigate against the problem of crime? Do we need more police, courts, judges, jails, probation and parole officers? Do we need more rehabilitative and restorative programs? Or do we need more human resources such as psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers? All these solutions are well after the fact and occur after the crime has been committed. It's probably true that crimes will always be committed and will never be completely eliminated from society. The goal should be to reduce crime perpetrated by young people before they become hardened criminals. Unfortunately, more youth appear to demonstrate hard-core behaviour at progressively younger ages. The bully at school, the roaming youth getting into trouble in the community, their association with the drug culture, taking revenge in drive-by shootings, and racing high- powered cars in a dangerous manner on city streets.

 What has been left out of this discussion so far is the responsibility that parents have in raising their children. When probation officers prepare reports for the Court during a trial of a young person or anyone accused of a crime, they often find during their assessment that starting at a very early age the accused person missed the very critical teaching of values. Any values will do that have basic respect for another person, concern for another person's welfare and property, and to take responsibility for your own actions and behaviour. All persons should be free from violence and the threat of violence. Most if not all these values can be found in the teaching of religious faiths or associated with the norms of diverse cultures. These values can be summed up as respecting the inherent dignity and individual worth of all persons.

 How then are these values not reflected in the behaviour of persons committing a crime? Could it be that no one has taken the time to teach and instill these values in the child during the early years? To be fair to the parents it may be that they were not taught these values and therefore are not able to teach their own child. Furthermore, parents may be absent from the home much of the time due to job commitments and in recent times both parents are working leaving children to fall under other influences. In some cases the child is living with a single parent where there is no stable other parent to assist in child rearing. In order for families to maintain a satisfactory standard of living, it is not unusual for both parents to work and for preschool children to attend day care at very early ages. Many parents try and compensate but many are not able to and therefore the child suffers from parental inattention or preoccupation with other concerns in their lives.

 What happens when the child is basically left on its own for much of the time each day? First, they are not receiving any discussion of values and are often left to undesirable influences found in our society. Violent video games and movies that depict disrespect for others and the depiction of violence towards others have been demonstrated to be harmful to young children. However, as with many other similar correlations, there are those who maintain that the results are not conclusive and therefore not applicable to all children.

 Where we see this denial of harmful influences most convincingly is in the parent-school confrontation. For example, the teacher or principal informs the parent of destructive or disruptive behaviour in school and the parent becomes defensive and denies the report from the principal. The situation then deteriorates to a battle between the parent and the principal. The principal expects the parent to exercise control of the child and the parent denies the school version even though the parent learns of the problem second hand. In the end no one has a lasting influence over the child and the child misses an opportunity to learn a valuable lesson in positive values.

 Therefore how can we prevent crime? Any rehabilitative program for youth must include the child's parent(s). The child needs to be taught values and in many cases parents need to be taught the same values before they can have any influence over the child's behaviour. Any government or community program must take into consideration a discussion of basic values and a process for implementing and sustaining them. This appears to be a simple solution but may not be practicable to all parents and children. Some parents will refuse to become involved while others will find it very difficult to engage due to other family and personal influences. This will narrow down the number of parents who will be able to participate and fewer still the number who will benefit in the end.

 What needs to be done to mitigate crime especially perpetrated by youth is for government policy to reflect the needs of children and families who are at risk. It might be too late for hardened criminals to change but some impact can be made on today's children, youth and families. There is still time to establish programs that will benefit young families that are at risk. Some programs that have been set up in our communities try to affect change by separating children or youth from their parents. Sometimes there is a need for this in order to stabilize a bad situation and temporarily reduce the risk of harm. Following a brief separation it is imperative that the family be reunited and enter into a therapeutic program. Fortunately there are rehabilitative programs available in the community. Unfortunately the families that need the programs do not have access or refuse to take part in the programs that are available. The programs themselves have deficits or are not suitable to the problem that is presented to them. Many focus on communication, and understanding the intentions and expectations of others. With youth the problem is the lack of a value system that promotes respect, and caring for other people. Changing entrenched dysfunctional behaviour is a difficult task to accomplish in a few counseling or therapy sessions. It requires a change in the way that an individual views the world around them. The task is further complicated because it is not enough to change the youth's value system but in many cases the value system of the parents needs to change as well in order for the change to be effective and long lasting. This is the reason why authorities find it is necessary to separate the child or youth from parents so that the counseling sessions will be more effective. Unfortunately, this is too is not always satisfactory since the child or youth will eventually return to a dysfunctional family.

 If we look at the variety of rehabilitative programs available in the community and also the rate of crime in the community we would conclude that the system is not working properly. There are so many negative influences available compared to positive ones. Children and youth are so exposed to unedited violence in the media and Internet that no amount of positive influence can counteract it. Even parents with positive values systems are helpless to be a positive influence in the lives of their children. So what does this say about our society? Where have we fallen short in perpetrating a positive value system? Can we as a society ever promote positive values in light of the direction that society seems to be headed today? The images we project within our culture seem to be out of control. There is an expectation that the individual has rights and can pursue the satisfaction of their wants and desires at any cost. We are bombarded by advertisements in the media that show that their product is the best and that we as individuals have the right to have the best. This is a powerful message to both parents and their children. The advertisements are filled with messages that have a profound negative effect on young vulnerable minds.


Another well-practiced attempt to change behaviour is the use of positive role models. This is why parents try to ensure that their children are enrolled in sports or other social activities that will expose their child to positive values and to attempt to emulate what appear to be healthy role models. This is not always successful when the role models are found not so positive in their own lives. However, this is an attempt to use what is available in the community and in many cases the use of positive activities and the use of role models has been effective in teaching positive values or changing the dysfunctional behaviour of many children and youth.
 So if we are to recall the evaluation of society's institutions and policies made by Dr. MacKinnon to the Dalhousie social work graduates in 1980, what should we be attempting to do? A society that requires both parents to work outside the home in order to provide adequately for their family and to rely on day care, or the school to teach their child basic values, needs to expect that deficits will occur in effective parenting. A comprehensive and critical analysis of public social policy by experts who have no biases needs to assess where stress is placed on parents, children and youth, and then prepare policy to relieve those stresses.