Crime is the criminal's fault - why the left should listen more to what the right says

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I guess we need to start at the beginning with crime. With where the blame lies. With the criminal.

Too often we are enjoined to find excuses – explanations in society – for crime. Psychologists tell us to look into the criminals upbringing, sociologists point to the environment in which the offender has lived, anthropologists mutter about peer pressure and some economists point the finger at the perverse incentives that come from inequality or financial failure.

Is all this wrong? Or should we seek a simpler explanation, one rooted in the idea of personal responsibility – crime is the fault of the criminal. Nobody makes the burglar burgle, the robber rob or the rapist rape. They do it themselves by their own choice and their upbringing, the urgings of peers or the porn movie they’ve just watched are of no consequence in all this – those things did not make the criminal a criminal. I know this to be true because other people have a similar deprived (or depraved) upbringing and do not burgle, others resist the lure of the gang and plenty watch porn without becoming rapists.

This view of crime is most commonly associated – in every case but rape – with conservatives and, more particularly with the right of the conservative party. Here’s Michael Howard back in 2004:

As a society we are in danger of being overrun by values which eat away at people's respect for themselves, each other, their homes and their neighbourhood.

Most damaging of all has been the dramatic decline in personal responsibility.

Many people now believe that they are no longer wholly responsible for their actions.

It's someone else's, or something else's fault - the environment, society, the Government.

In the case of rape Howard and the conservative right are joined – for this crime only it seems at times – by the left, something that is a cause for celebration since it shows that with the right conditions, these people can be persuaded that criminality is a matter of personal choice not an inevitable consequence of poverty, inequality or some other of society’s ailments. The individual – and how refreshing it is that some on the left are willing to acknowledge choice – does not have to commit crime, there is no inevitability.

So having got that clear – crime is always, without exception, the fault of the criminal – we should consider the more nuanced, even vexed, question that crime exists. That some circumstances put us at greater risk of being a victim and that there are things that we can do (or that others can do) to reduce this risk.

At the neighbourhood forums in our village, the police now attend (they call them “Partners & Communities Together” meetings, an especially annoying term) to listen to local concerns, update us on crime and provide advice. This advice, most commonly, takes the form of reminding us to lock doors, close windows and make other precautions against the criminal – we’re warned of “Hanoi” burglaries, told how easy it is to break the locks of plastic doors and reminded that garden sheds are also a target. All good stuff and welcome.

And when our sons and daughters are first going out in an evening, we worry about getting that late night call from the hospital. So we give good advice – don’t drink too much, stay together, don’t go off with strangers, make sure you have enough money to get home. We’ll sometimes tell our sons or daughters to avoid certain places – perhaps a particular pub or maybe a certain location – because we know they’re more dangerous.

All of this advice – not to mention the fretting and worrying – is intended to reduce the risk of being a victim. It doesn’t contradict the responsibility of the criminal for his or her crime – the burglary is still the fault of the burglar, the mugging is the fault of the mugger and the rape is the fault of the rapist.

But, however much we may wish it otherwise, there are burglars, there are robbers and there are rapists. So reducing our personal risk makes sense – reclaiming the night may be a desirable and laudable aim but until it is reclaimed that personal risk remains. So if going to a certain place increases that risk it is foolish to go there, if not securing our house increases that risk then we should secure our house and if staying in well lit, patrolled areas keeps us safe we should try to stay in those areas.

The same goes for wider social interventions – if reducing poverty (or aborting baby boys as has been observed) reduces the number of criminals that is good but not why we should try to reduce poverty. If fewer single parent families reduces crime that is also good but not why we should consider the social impact of single parenthood. And if better schools mean fewer crimes that is wonderful but not why we should want better schools.

Some people simply make the choice to be criminals – to steal, to assault, to kill, to rape. And they must not be allowed to use the Randy’s response:

"I'm depraved on account of I'm deprived"

Crime is the fault of the criminal. But that doesn’t mean we – as individuals and as a society – shouldn’t try to make things safer for the law abiding. And it certainly means we shouldn't act to make it less safe for people.

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“...it’s not a matter of whether you win or lose but how you place the blame”

 

I recall a ‘Peanuts’ cartoon that took the rise out of an old saw with:

“...it’s not a matter of whether you win or lose but how you place the blame”

We all smiled but underneath this pleasure at a little witticism lies a darker truth – we do, all of us, seek to lay the blame somewhere other than on ourselves. And with this goes our pleasure – that schadenfreude – at going over past failings so as to point the finger of condemnation, to lay the blame. Such passing of responsibility’s buck has become not only institutionalised but expensive.

The Saville report's numbers are their own indictment – 434 days in session, 12 years from inception to publication, a £191m budget, tens of millions of words and finally a retail price of £572.

It’s not for me to enquire whether this enquiry provided catharsis for those involved or merely a bully pulpit for republicanism but merely for us to appreciate that the blame game now sits at the core of how we behave. Everywhere we look people seek excuses for this mistakes, faults and failings – we have become a nation of Heinz Kiosks crying at every opportunity: “we are all guilty”.

We have become dependent rather than free, supplicants to the state in all its forms and ready to play a fine hand of excuses – race, sex, social upbringing, drink, drugs, peer pressure – whenever something goes wrong. We are no longer prepared – unless forced by authority – to accept personal responsibility for our lives and how we live them.

For the conservative this is a problem – personal responsibility is central to what we believe. Yet human instinct seems to draw us away from accepting that responsibility – the first response of the sales clerk or shop assistant is seldom to apologise. More usually it is to seek excuse – to explain why the product or service failed. As if we care about how short staffed they are or how the supplier let them down or whether they were ill - that is their problem, not mine. It is their responsibility.

The problem is that this culture of dependence and supplication leads us to an expectation that our problems will be resolved by others – parents, employer and, most commonly, the government. The state must act to “create jobs”, to “protect families”, to “promote well-being” – to lay down “solutions” to all the problems of our lives. And when there’s a problem – new or old – there’s a lobby group on hand and opposition politicians ready and waiting to call for action, for “something to be done”.

There are two big problems with this dependence – the first is that is creates a class of folk dependent on the government. Either because they – in ever larger numbers – work for that government or because they are financially dependent on the handouts of that government (rather ironically called “benefits”). But there is a second problem, more insidious yet – the rejection by so many of any responsibility for ordering their lives divides society.

The big divide in western societies is no longer between rich and poor, nor is it between ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ classes, the big schism is between the dependent and the independent. Between those who, most of the time, act independently of government and those who depend on the state. The growth of the latter – of the state-dependent – squeezes out private action and initiative, stifles innovation. Why get involved, why innovate when there is a benign state to care for us? I recall my mother bemoaning how difficult it was to recruit volunteers for the day centre – the most common reason for rejection: “that’s the council’s job”.

The principle of responsibility has become so compromised that it results in injustice:

Reggie Bush is a good case in point. Playing for the University of Southern California, he won the 2005 Heisman Trophy as the most outstanding college football player in the USA, while his team won the national championship. The results of an NCAA investigation, however, found that Bush knowingly broke the rules by allowing a sports agent hoping to represent him someday to provide free housing for his parents. Although Bush might have to return some awards, he is safe and sound as a very well paid professional football player. His coach at the time of his violations, Pete Carroll, is now coaching the Seattle Seahawks professional football team and will not be punished. The penalties go to the school, USC, and its current football players who will be barred from bowl games for a couple of years. The people most responsible for the violation -- Bush and his coaches -- go mostly unpunished.

And our rejection of personal responsibility has led to a veritable frenzy of lawyers scrapping over the opportunity to extract value from blaming someone else – personal injury claims, employment tribunals, class action cases against smoking or drinking and a host of other lucrative sources of legal business. For sure, I know the defence – sometimes it really is someone else’s fault – but we have reached a stage where the first response of some to a trip or a bump is to ring the lawyer, to lay the blame on some other poor fellow. “Ah, but the insurance will pay” is the cry – as if the insurance company owns a special breed of money tree! And when the premiums rise there’s a lobby on hand to call for government action, for regulation.

As a conservative, I believe I have a primary duty to myself, to my family and to my neighbours. This duty is not discharged by passing across responsibility to government in return for a tax bill. It is discharged by me taking responsibility for my life, for all the crisis and chaos, for all the pleasure and excitement, for all the ups and downs. It is discharged by me doing the right thing by my family, my friends and my neighbours. There is no government in this, no regulation, no lawyers, no church, no god – just me and my responsibility. As Robert Heinlein put it:

I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

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"Fake Tories" - why Sarah Wollaston isn't a Conservative

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We have heard – perhaps less so recently – David Cameron’s call for personal responsibility. It may at times seem like mere rhetoric, a call to the traditional Tory gallery but to those of us brought up in the Party it is a message that matters. Along with independence, tolerance and freedom sits responsibility as a central element in the pantheon of Conservative values. You cannot stand up and lay claim to being a conservative if you do not accept these values. And that these values are individual values not collective values.

Only a person can be independent, tolerant, freedom-loving and responsible, these are not values that can be ascribed to the collective. Yet there are those – we’ll call them “Fake Tories” – who promote ideas that directly contradict, even deny, these values. By way of example, here is the MP for Totnes writing (why am I unsurprised by this) in the Guardian:

The alcohol strategy is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change Britain for the better. If we waste it with ineffective "industry partnerships" and voluntary codes we should not delude ourselves that local public health initiatives can have any effect. Strong central action on pricing is essential, combined with the ability to introduce locally relevant measures on availability and treatment.

Now leaving aside that Ms Wollaston plays fast and loose with the evidence (I love that she acknowledges the reduction in alcohol consumption but says that it is making no difference – a degree of epidemiological ignorance I don’t expect from someone with her superior educational background), she absolutely refuses to see that the problem isn’t the drinking. For sure the drinking helps but the behaviour is learned:

Intoxicated people have much greater control over their behavior than generally recognized. For example, in those societies in which people don't believe that alcohol causes disinhibition, intoxication never leads to unacceptable behavior. 

Research in the US has found that when males are falsely led to believe that they have been drinking alcohol, they tend to become more aggressive. And when men and women falsely believe that they have been drinking alcohol, they experience greater sexual arousal when watching erotica.

The issue is one of personal responsibility rather than something to be passed off onto an inanimate third party – alcohol. People act with freedom – something we Tories believe in – by choosing to drink but not always responsibly. Therefore we should deal with the irresponsibility – which in Ms Wollaston’s pathology is a public order issue. It should be treated as such.

Others – and our ‘Fake Tory’ describes this too – are irresponsible enough to drink so much that they damage their health. This isn’t a new phenomenon – alcoholism has been around almost as long as booze itself – and ultimately it is for the individual to embrace the consequences and either die or else do something about it.

In the end – as Conservatives – we believe that people make their own choices and take the consequences of those choices. We do not believe that the inanimate – let alone society – made us do it, our choices are not forced but free. If Ms Wollaston believes otherwise – and the article in the Guardian suggests that this is the case – then she isn’t a real Conservative but just another social democrat, another person who believes that the state must force, must direct the choices we make.

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