Thinking laterally about crime

I'm not a huge fan of criminals. In the last five years I was living in Malaysia, my house was broken into on average five times a year. They rarely made off with anything of importance - except the first time when they managed to take my computer with years and years of work on it, along with my back-up hard drive. They stole things that ranged from the annoying (my phone chargers) to the bizarre (the brush I used to scrub my back with in the shower!). And each time they left a trail of damage and repair, and I'd have to scrape together both money and self-confidence.

So not much of a fan of criminals.

But I'm less of a fan of the police. Not once did they catch anyone. Not when they broke into my house, and not when they stole a pile of cable from TNB that would have required a forklift to carry it. Admittedly, after the first five or so futile police reports, I stopped bothering. There's a limit to how often I'm going to waste my time in a police station when there are no tangible results. I should add that the police were always polite and reasonably helpful. Just not really very... useful. And there's the problem of them, you know, spying on my friends, arresting people I care about for no very good reason, hitting them, that sort of thing.

Because of this, I've had an interest for a while in whether the police force, in any country, really works at keeping down crime. And the answer seems to be largely, no. What keeps crime down is communities, jobs, families, that sort of thing. I'm not saying we don't need a police force at - there are times they're needed, whether it's helping lost children, or, you know, solving the few crimes that would be left if we were doing the other things needed to stop crime. But generally, police are good at a huge array of stuff that isn't about solving crime - look to the NYPD and their racist 'stop-and-frisk' policy. Hasn't lowered the crime rate, has made huge numbers of young Black men angry/er and has helped some boys in uniform feel more important than they really are. Does this sound at all familiar?

If politicians, and the public, are really interested in lowering crime there are a number of concrete steps that can be done. First, putting social justice, not neoliberal ideology, at the forefront of economic policy. Neoliberal economics doesn't even work by its own yardsticks, never mind that this yardsticks are flawed in the first place. Second, putting resources into building communities. This isn't as difficult as it sounds. Start off by decreasing school and class size, and mosque/ church/ temple size. Encourage local businesses, not big businesses (that's also where the jobs are). Stop building roads - or build smaller ones with lots of bumps and potholes that slow cars down so the streets are safe for kids to play on. Third, and this isn't going to win anyone any votes, let's take a more sensible approach to citizenship and immigration. Crime is going to be a factor as long as there are various tiers of residents and no, to quote Obama, 'pathway to citizenship' for a huge sector of Malaysian residents, whether they're workers or refugees. We need to stop this underclass from existing, from being exploited, and from not giving a damn about the society they live in (why should they, society doesn't care about them). And, last, let's look at what our prisons do to people. They are hellholes into which people disappear, then reappear worse than before. Is that really a good use of taxpayer's money?

I could also mention access to reproductive health care and information for both women and men, regardless of marital status or sexual preference, but that might be going too far for any of our political parties. Ah well.