As Somali pirates continue to hijack more and more vessels, fingers are being pointed, but who's really to blame?
Piracy off of the horn of Africa has been rife over the past few months, but with the capture of an American vessel and the first of many British warships entering the area, the issue is once again heating up. While the temporary solution to the problem seems to be clear, the causes and thus the long-term solutions seem to be muddled and unknown.
When I was driving home today, I heard a guest on "The World" give what must surely be the most western version of the story. Namely, Somalia is chugging out pirates because it has a failed state. Because there is no overarching coercive force to force the law on desperate Somalis, they are behaving so reprehensibly. Notwithstanding that coercion doesn't work, the feeling is that if the Somalian state is unable to beat it's own citizens into doing what's right, other states will send their navies in to beat up Somalian citizens into doing what's right (we insist).
But, of course, the whole point of a state is not to force it's population into a certain set of behavior patterns through force. It is unsurprising that those states who have held such to be their mandate have all invariably failed. Put otherwise, it is the attempt to mete out law at all costs that causes states to fail, rather than the failure of a state that causes lawlessness. After all, there are many communities in the world that don't have direct, external, state-sponsored law that do just fine (like the Amish, for example), and to think that men are naturally savage and require strong governance over them to prevent rampant anarchy and death may be surprised to know that their philosophical roots were already cut out nearly 400 years ago...
The particular guest then went on to say that another reason for Somali piracy is the desperate condition of Somalis. Specifically, because they have a failed state, they don't have education, roads, or welfare. Simply put, without government giving you what you need, you are left in a world of squalor. Of course, this idea is actually absurd. People have gotten on well enough without states providing infrastructure or medical bill reimbursement or factory-produced government schools for millennia. If this hyper-statist point of view were accurate, then the entire world, pre-westphalia, would have been nothing more than barbarity and mass butchery: something we know to be patently false.
We know as fact that people can take care of themselves without a government handing them everything without immediately resorting to things like piracy. The overbearingly western idea that the failure of the state has transitively caused the problems is clearly confused. Thea idea that Somalis are risking their lives for $10 million in one go when they otherwise might make $10 over their entire lifetime seems much more at heart in this issue. We could just lump this all into a category of mass greed if it weren't for the fact that Somalis do suffer SO much and are in SUCH a state of destitution. Such want undoubtedly would drive people to float rafts hundreds of miles away from shore just for a chance at relief.
This brings us to another thing that this particular guest noted. Somalis are in a very desperate state, and we know this because almost everyone there is reliant on food aid. Once again, there is reason to believe that this line of thinking has been turned on its head. It is assuming that the Somalis are desperate (perhaps due to lack of an overbearing government), that they are required to take food aid in order just to get out of the worst of their deprivation. In fact, it may be that the opposite is true: food aid is CAUSING the worst of the deprivation.
Foreign aid is often channeled into the hands of governments who simply divert the funds for themselves. Somalia was no exception to this in the early 1990's. Those resources that DO manage to make it down to regular people undermine the fledgling ability for the people to provide for themselves. After all, what Somali farmer or pastor can possibly compete against free food from the rest of the world? What you wind up with is with a bunch of out of work farmers swelling the need for more aid, while no longer being able to help free their country from their need of it. Add to that interest payments on loans, and we can begin to see a fundamental factor for the worsening of the situation in Africa since we've started giving out aid.
So, in the end, if it's not a matter of a failure of state or a failure of aid that's causing the conditions which breeds piracy, then the question is, "this is a failure of what?" Firstly, and most clearly, this is a failure of Somalians to provide well enough for themselves. If they grew enough food, and desired political unity and economic stability (rather than the tribalism and looter-take-all attitude which has been rife in Somalia for the past few thousand years) enough, they would be able to MAKE an environment in which piracy was no longer such a good-seeming option. While a state may very well be helpful, all states rest on the consent of the governed (they are made for the people BY the people), and the governed seem to have no will to make a state. It requires little imagination to consider what would happen were a state forced on them from outside...
While the Somalis should take a lion's share of the blame (but if they don't feel guilty, then what good will it ultimately do?), the outside world certainly hasn't helped. Rather than encouraging entreprenurialism, or civil society, it encourages dependency (which, in the end is really another word for slavery), and attacks civic institutions as harbingers of terrorism. We want Somalia to step in line, and do things our way. After all, there's a profit to be had.
If we want to have any hope to change this situation, there seems to be only two real options. The first is to swarm the Gulf of Aden with warships and murder anyone caught in a boat, while at the same time colonizing Somalia and giving (forcing on) them a state which they were unable to make themselves. Extreme order through extreme coercion. Welcome to the 1800's. The second, of course, is to stop half-assedly engaging with Somalia in a system which is ultimately propagating the problem. By this, I mean that we need to wean Somalia off of its dependency that is ultimately its ruin, and we need to stop behaving like we can control a Somali state (or even that we know what it should look like), and let Somalia grow up into a strong, independent nation. Stiflement begets destitution begets retribution, now as in the past, and to simply state that Somalia has "failed" to make a state in our image that follows our laws and norms is simply continuing the problem to the indefinite future.
Showing posts with label solutions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label solutions. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Judicial Reform (Part 3)
Judicial Reform (Part 2)
Covering the application of justice in the modern world
Judicial Reform (Part 1)
covering a brief philosophical history of justice
So, what are we left with?
We are left with a judicial system in which the state takes over as prosecutor when a "crime" has no victim, and the way in which the scales are balanced is by the method which has the least utility, while at the same time is the most expensive, destructive, and ultimately detrimental.
So what can we do?
The first thing, of course, we need to do is to completely eliminate any form of attempting justice that relies on coercion. No fines, no fees, no prison, no capital punishment. Period.
Of course, this does cause a few loose ends to show up. The first is, "how do we do justice?", that is, how do we balance the scales? In the end, a victim who is unable to find justice can be worse than a perpetrator who has chafed under the coercive punishment of imprisonment. The best answer is restitution, as it is the most satisfying way of vindicating the victim, and thus the least amount of action is actually required for the victim to feel that justice has been done.
If you burn down my house, for example, and you go to jail, the fact is that I still don't have a house (and to add injury to insult, I now need to pay for your jail time). This is clearly an unsatisfying way to vindicate my pain, and, as such, more of it is required to go the same distance. This is, of course, disastrous when more of the most expensive means is the only option.
Furthermore, being the victim of crime and injustice is a deeply personal thing. What is troubling to most people who have had their house broken into is less the stuff that's been taken, and more the deep feeling of invasion of privacy and fear for their families. This personal aspect is left unsatiated with the application of justice in our modern world. As such, not only is punishment bad for the criminal, and only gets worse the more you apply, punishment is also unsatisfying to the victim, which means that more is required in order for justice to be served.
This is why restitution is by far the better means of handling justice than retribution and revenge. After all, if someone broke into your house and stole something, which would be more satisfying, the perpetrator returning the stolen property, sincerely apologizing, and buying you a new and improved front door lock, or to have the perpetrator worked through a sterile system and have them sit in a prison, get free room and board, and you have to pay for it all? You can take pleasure in the actual mental anguish of imprisonment, but it is invariably far less satisfying compared to a solution that is personal, applicable and appropriate, and, most importantly actually fixes the problems caused by the crime.
The other major loose end is how to deter crime. Obviously, we would all like to have a judicial system that helps prevent crime in the first place, rather than just trying to clean up the mess. Again, I turn to John Burton:
The axiomatic element in all human behavior is relationships. No progress can be made in the study of any level of behavior unless there is description and explanation of relationships, how they evolve, how they are learned, what patterns emerge, and why there is observance of and deviance from them.
At the ground floor level, conflict is an aberration, a breakdown in social or authority relationships. Having thus deviated, the subject is required to experience a form of punishment or negative satisfaction. Punishment, even physical punishment, by a parent is usually in the context of a relationship. It is not the physical hurt that has any effect. What is at stake is the relationship, and to preserve this the child is prepared to conform if necessary. But punishment by a parent, teacher, or authority with whom there is no valued relationship rests entirely on the physical pain or the deprivation inflicted, with which the human organism has a physical and mental capacity to cope. It is this form of punishment, unassociated with valued relationships, that the court, authorities and society inflict. Behavior is not altered by it in the direction intended.
The point being made is that coercion is temporary, abstract, and resistible, actual deterrence comes from things that are permanent and personal. For example, if the relationship with someone you love is damaged by something you do, it will have a deeply personal effect, that is permanent until you can make up for it (that is, until justice is served). In this way, the perpetrator is given a positive goal of how to make amends for their crime, and plenty of reason to do so (what they have with the other person is lost until they make amends). Rather than the idea that a crime will create a temporary, abstract problem that can be resisted, such actions would create a sense of personal loss that will endure until it is eventually undone. Clearly the latter is not only more deterring, but provides much more impetus for the criminal to actively correct their problem in the way that will be the most satisfying to the victim. Compared to the current system that provides no impetus for restoring the world to its pre-crime state, and is less satisfying to the victim, and is expensive and destructive, clearly this method is the one of choice.
Of course, this requires there to be something out there that any given person would be loathed to allow to be lost or negatively altered. Again John Burton:
Modern industrial society tends to destroy and not to build relationships. Technological developments require shifts in occupation and changes in living environments. There is no identity, or relationship on a personal basis, with a monopolized industry, a large company, or the society as a whole represented by the tax gatherer. In the absence of internalized norms you do not pay your fare or for your shopping unless clearly required to do so. This is a situation that will get worse as industrial society gets larger and even more anonymous.
If relationships are the backbone of deterrence, and the lack of them is the result of modernity, what are we to do? I mean, how much different is your life from prison actually, other than that you have to work and your family is already there? Clearly, without this excommunication (exile) and public humiliation (capital punishment) have little utility.
Of course, it would be easy to just say "death to modernity" and try to recreate a feudal system (which might not be so bad now that we know how to combat the plague), but such a drastic social overhaul would be a bit of a challenge. That being said, in a targeted way, this would actually be possible. After all, if people don't hold people they care about at gunpoint for their money, or steal their car, or whatever, wouldn't it make sense to do things to make people care about each other? After all, would it be better to spend $10,000 per year per poor, urban youth to get them to know and care about their neighbors, or would it be better to spend $10,000 per year to destroy that same youth's future while leaving the victim unvindicated after a crime has already been committed?
The answer is obvious. If you spend even half that amount, you're still spending $100 per person per week just for them to get to know people in their community. You could just GIVE them the money for helping the elderly, and you'd be relatively sure that you're clearing out a whole class of people that the person won't commit a crime against. Plus, the more involved a person gets in a community, the easier it is for them to get involved in their community. The more involvement, the more personal risk to the person who might commit a crime (and, arguably, the less likely they are to commit a crime in the first place).
This is not an idle pipe-dream, while spending most of our focus on prisons. Why should we abandon the better, cheaper system for the vastly more expensive system that causes more problems than it attempts to solve?
On a final note, I believe that we need to systematically end any court case that begins with "the people of..." Crimes against the state, unless they are actual, honest to goodness crimes against the state itself (like embezzlement from a state fund, or defacing state property, etc.), should be completely thrown out. There MUST be a victim in the courthouse (or perhaps their family in the case of a murder) who has actually been victimized by the defendant. If there isn't then such a case is CAUSING injustice to the "defendant", rather than meting out "justice" in balance for a "crime" that has no actual victims.
If the state gets on the ball and throws out victimless crimes and it throws out the methods that require a lot of pain and destruction just so that the victim remains unsatisfied, we can have a working legal system which finally stops creating more suffering than it attempts to alleviate.
Covering the application of justice in the modern world
Judicial Reform (Part 1)
covering a brief philosophical history of justice
So, what are we left with?
We are left with a judicial system in which the state takes over as prosecutor when a "crime" has no victim, and the way in which the scales are balanced is by the method which has the least utility, while at the same time is the most expensive, destructive, and ultimately detrimental.
So what can we do?
The first thing, of course, we need to do is to completely eliminate any form of attempting justice that relies on coercion. No fines, no fees, no prison, no capital punishment. Period.
Of course, this does cause a few loose ends to show up. The first is, "how do we do justice?", that is, how do we balance the scales? In the end, a victim who is unable to find justice can be worse than a perpetrator who has chafed under the coercive punishment of imprisonment. The best answer is restitution, as it is the most satisfying way of vindicating the victim, and thus the least amount of action is actually required for the victim to feel that justice has been done.
If you burn down my house, for example, and you go to jail, the fact is that I still don't have a house (and to add injury to insult, I now need to pay for your jail time). This is clearly an unsatisfying way to vindicate my pain, and, as such, more of it is required to go the same distance. This is, of course, disastrous when more of the most expensive means is the only option.
Furthermore, being the victim of crime and injustice is a deeply personal thing. What is troubling to most people who have had their house broken into is less the stuff that's been taken, and more the deep feeling of invasion of privacy and fear for their families. This personal aspect is left unsatiated with the application of justice in our modern world. As such, not only is punishment bad for the criminal, and only gets worse the more you apply, punishment is also unsatisfying to the victim, which means that more is required in order for justice to be served.
This is why restitution is by far the better means of handling justice than retribution and revenge. After all, if someone broke into your house and stole something, which would be more satisfying, the perpetrator returning the stolen property, sincerely apologizing, and buying you a new and improved front door lock, or to have the perpetrator worked through a sterile system and have them sit in a prison, get free room and board, and you have to pay for it all? You can take pleasure in the actual mental anguish of imprisonment, but it is invariably far less satisfying compared to a solution that is personal, applicable and appropriate, and, most importantly actually fixes the problems caused by the crime.
The other major loose end is how to deter crime. Obviously, we would all like to have a judicial system that helps prevent crime in the first place, rather than just trying to clean up the mess. Again, I turn to John Burton:
The axiomatic element in all human behavior is relationships. No progress can be made in the study of any level of behavior unless there is description and explanation of relationships, how they evolve, how they are learned, what patterns emerge, and why there is observance of and deviance from them.
At the ground floor level, conflict is an aberration, a breakdown in social or authority relationships. Having thus deviated, the subject is required to experience a form of punishment or negative satisfaction. Punishment, even physical punishment, by a parent is usually in the context of a relationship. It is not the physical hurt that has any effect. What is at stake is the relationship, and to preserve this the child is prepared to conform if necessary. But punishment by a parent, teacher, or authority with whom there is no valued relationship rests entirely on the physical pain or the deprivation inflicted, with which the human organism has a physical and mental capacity to cope. It is this form of punishment, unassociated with valued relationships, that the court, authorities and society inflict. Behavior is not altered by it in the direction intended.
The point being made is that coercion is temporary, abstract, and resistible, actual deterrence comes from things that are permanent and personal. For example, if the relationship with someone you love is damaged by something you do, it will have a deeply personal effect, that is permanent until you can make up for it (that is, until justice is served). In this way, the perpetrator is given a positive goal of how to make amends for their crime, and plenty of reason to do so (what they have with the other person is lost until they make amends). Rather than the idea that a crime will create a temporary, abstract problem that can be resisted, such actions would create a sense of personal loss that will endure until it is eventually undone. Clearly the latter is not only more deterring, but provides much more impetus for the criminal to actively correct their problem in the way that will be the most satisfying to the victim. Compared to the current system that provides no impetus for restoring the world to its pre-crime state, and is less satisfying to the victim, and is expensive and destructive, clearly this method is the one of choice.
Of course, this requires there to be something out there that any given person would be loathed to allow to be lost or negatively altered. Again John Burton:
Modern industrial society tends to destroy and not to build relationships. Technological developments require shifts in occupation and changes in living environments. There is no identity, or relationship on a personal basis, with a monopolized industry, a large company, or the society as a whole represented by the tax gatherer. In the absence of internalized norms you do not pay your fare or for your shopping unless clearly required to do so. This is a situation that will get worse as industrial society gets larger and even more anonymous.
If relationships are the backbone of deterrence, and the lack of them is the result of modernity, what are we to do? I mean, how much different is your life from prison actually, other than that you have to work and your family is already there? Clearly, without this excommunication (exile) and public humiliation (capital punishment) have little utility.
Of course, it would be easy to just say "death to modernity" and try to recreate a feudal system (which might not be so bad now that we know how to combat the plague), but such a drastic social overhaul would be a bit of a challenge. That being said, in a targeted way, this would actually be possible. After all, if people don't hold people they care about at gunpoint for their money, or steal their car, or whatever, wouldn't it make sense to do things to make people care about each other? After all, would it be better to spend $10,000 per year per poor, urban youth to get them to know and care about their neighbors, or would it be better to spend $10,000 per year to destroy that same youth's future while leaving the victim unvindicated after a crime has already been committed?
The answer is obvious. If you spend even half that amount, you're still spending $100 per person per week just for them to get to know people in their community. You could just GIVE them the money for helping the elderly, and you'd be relatively sure that you're clearing out a whole class of people that the person won't commit a crime against. Plus, the more involved a person gets in a community, the easier it is for them to get involved in their community. The more involvement, the more personal risk to the person who might commit a crime (and, arguably, the less likely they are to commit a crime in the first place).
This is not an idle pipe-dream, while spending most of our focus on prisons. Why should we abandon the better, cheaper system for the vastly more expensive system that causes more problems than it attempts to solve?
On a final note, I believe that we need to systematically end any court case that begins with "the people of..." Crimes against the state, unless they are actual, honest to goodness crimes against the state itself (like embezzlement from a state fund, or defacing state property, etc.), should be completely thrown out. There MUST be a victim in the courthouse (or perhaps their family in the case of a murder) who has actually been victimized by the defendant. If there isn't then such a case is CAUSING injustice to the "defendant", rather than meting out "justice" in balance for a "crime" that has no actual victims.
If the state gets on the ball and throws out victimless crimes and it throws out the methods that require a lot of pain and destruction just so that the victim remains unsatisfied, we can have a working legal system which finally stops creating more suffering than it attempts to alleviate.
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