Today, crime is being experienced and reported with increasing frequency throughout the globe. A recent survey of US major city police chiefs cited increased concern for crime and crime opportunity, just at a time when budgets are being reduced and crime opportunity is increasing. Within the posts of this blog the author has reported increasing crime evidences from reported observations of localized crime waves in Argentina, Australia, Russia, Israel, Mexico, off-the-Somalia coast, UK, and the USA, and most ferociously in the developing countries. Public officials will urge caution in declaring any definitive time or existance of a crime wave, however it is being felt and experienced by many around the globe.
The CNN article goes on to report that "Organizers used the Internet to mobilize people, setting up a Web page asking Congress to declare a national security emergency, and creating a Facebook page for the march. More than 106,000 people signed up as "friends." Those gathered in the Plaza de Mayo -- many carrying photos of their dead loved ones -- asked their leaders to act against rising crime." The internet will bring the immediacy of messages to many people exponentially quicker than the great depression when there was no email, no fax, no CNN.
What then is a crime wave? The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English describes a crime wave as: Crime wave, • noun, a sudden increase in the number of crimes committed in a country or area. Mark Fishman (1978) had a more meaningful definition -- “When we speak of a crime wave, we are talking about a kind of social awareness of crime, crime brought to public attention.”[i] This attenion may surface as a result of a catastrophic criminal event such as a particularly violent crime or spree of crimes, repeated hashing or rehashing of crime data, a particular news story of crime news or events, or some other shady calculation or notion brought to public attention. The data may show a peak to trough pattern of crime, but public perceptions and fear of crime is a greater barometer of crime waves in terms of public thinking."
Graciela Lopez takes part in the march on Wednesday. Her 16-year-old son was killed by a drunk driver in 2007. (CNN Photo)
Reported this morning on CNN was an alarming story of public marches, exceeding 10,000 participants, marching in Argentina against a crime wave felt by the public. Brian Brynes, CNN reporter, wrote, "BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (CNN) -- An estimated 10,000 Argentines marched on the historic Plaza de Mayo in the capital, Buenos Aires, on Wednesday to demand more anti-crime measures, reflecting a top priority among Argentines, according to recent polls. There were other anti-crime marches throughout Argentina on Wednesday night, as well. At least three police officers have been killed in Buenos Aires in recent weeks, and other high-profile crimes have grabbed the nation's attention. An employee of Argentina's most famous TV talk-show host, Susana Gimenez, was killed last month. That prompted Gimenez to call for the return of the death penalty. The death penalty was outlawed in Argentina in 1984, a year after the country's military ended its seven-year dictatorship, during which some 30,000 people were killed." Read the entire article on CNN. See all stories on this topic
The CNN article goes on to report that "Organizers used the Internet to mobilize people, setting up a Web page asking Congress to declare a national security emergency, and creating a Facebook page for the march. More than 106,000 people signed up as "friends." Those gathered in the Plaza de Mayo -- many carrying photos of their dead loved ones -- asked their leaders to act against rising crime." The internet will bring the immediacy of messages to many people exponentially quicker than the great depression when there was no email, no fax, no CNN.
It is time for the UN to call together the world's leaders, economists, criminologists, sociologists, and planners and prepare now for what shall surely be a scourge for the unprepared.
Preparation has its own Hawthorne effect, when you prepare, you change the outcome. Let's not wait for the social science empiricists to measure definitively that we are experiencing a crime wave (such as the wait economists make in declaring a recession waiting for 2-quarters to occur 'while Britian burns') before we address the increasing negative consequences of a crime wave, that is exacerbated by the economic condition.
When the patient is in the emergency operating room, it is not the time to suggest -- shall we give him placebo (a fake defibulizer) or the procedure we expect to most likely save the patient's life? Much is known about crime already, especially about what works, and what does not work, and we do not have the luxury of time to conduct new double blind studies of interventions in the brewing sea-storm where some people get real aid and others get placebo. In the words of Emerson, if you see that somebody has no shoes, you know the appropriate gift is shoes, and not some other form of aid.
We are human beings, we are not rats or mice, and in our dire economic condition we must experiment on the run as we are facing a rapidly brewing cocktail of economic misery that will exacerbate crime conditions and crime opportunity itself. We need to combat the conditions of crime opportunity with tactics that meet crime opportunity whereever, whenever, using manuver warfare style mobility.
If we are prepared, there is no need to fear.
It is time for action. We need local, regional, national, and international crime control strategies that are equal to the emerging challenges of our age. We are experiencing a 100-year event, and our institutions were designed to handle the 20-year cycle events; we are unprepared. It is time to get moving to make preparations for crime control and social controls to keep the majority of population from becoming civil disobedient in the face of economic challenges, as eating food becomes prima facie more important than the fact that the apples I am eating are on my neighbors property. The rationalization for crime starts small, and if not abated, may increase and some may not return to their law-abiding ways.
There can be nothing more important on the world agenda than getting the economy back on the train tracks again, creating sustainable jobs, bolstering economic growth, and combating economic misery that may lead to increased crime if not abated. All other talk of combatting global warming, solving all other manner of worlds problems must be secondary, for if the driver of the economic engine dies, there will be no resources for all other items.
[i] Mark Fishman, “Crime Waves as Ideology,” Social Problems, Vol 25, no.5, June 1978.
