Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

Maybe, just maybe, (face­tious­ly) we, all over the world, have not con­ceived of and un­der­stood crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty in a man­ner which match­es the his­tor­i­cal evo­lu­tion and its all-com­pre­hen­sive root­ing in world civil­i­sa­tion. It fol­lows, there­fore, that we have not been able to find so­lu­tions to at least keep crim­i­nal be­hav­iours with­in man­age­able lim­its.

As a re­sult, we in our time are be­ing over­whelmed by crim­i­nal­i­ty be­cause we are not ap­pre­cia­tive, in in­stances de­lib­er­ate­ly so, of the his­tor­i­cal caus­es of crime and how they have be­come set­tled in the DNA of the struc­tur­ing of na­tions, so­ci­eties and our world over the last 2000 years.

West­ern so­ci­ol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy and crim­i­nol­o­gy have un­der­stood and de­fined crime as de­viant be­hav­iours of dis­placed and dys­func­tion­al groups in so­ci­eties and na­tions. Durkheim ar­gues that crime re­sults from the dif­fer­ences in ex­pe­ri­ences of in­di­vid­u­als.

He goes fur­ther to give a mea­sure of val­ue to crim­i­nal be­hav­iours when act­ed out, they serve the pur­pose of re­in­forc­ing ac­cept­able norms and pun­ish­ing be­hav­iours which have been de­fined as crim­i­nal.

While oth­ers such as We­ber place crime re­sult­ing from con­flict and pow­er be­tween and amongst in­di­vid­u­als and groups.

Stud­ies amongst pris­on­ers iden­ti­fy men­tal ill­ness as a ma­jor con­tribut­ing fac­tor to crime– maybe we need to find out what sent such peo­ple mad. The fo­cus pop­u­la­tion of such a study on pris­on­ers leaves out the ex­am­i­na­tion of the pop­u­la­tion which us­es its re­sources, eg, pow­er, fi­nan­cial wealth and in­flu­ence to play the le­gal sys­tem to pro­tect them against go­ing to jail.

We must add to the sam­ple pop­u­la­tions, in­sti­tu­tions, coun­tries, and lead­ers who have dec­i­mat­ed pop­u­la­tions and com­mit­ted whole­sale eco­nom­ic ex­ploita­tion of peo­ples from his­tor­i­cal times to the present to find out mo­ti­va­tions and caus­es.

Coun­tries such as the USA and Britain have in­sti­tut­ed mea­sures/laws to en­sure their cit­i­zens, cor­po­ra­tions etc can­not be hauled be­fore in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal courts for crimes they may have com­mit­ted against weak na­tions’ peo­ples.

Clos­er to the re­al­i­ty of how I con­ceive of the fun­da­men­tal caus­es of crim­i­nal be­hav­iours are in the “left-lean­ing”–in­ci­den­tal­ly, this ide­o­log­i­cal de­scrip­tion is one I shall come to in the fu­ture–so­ci­ol­o­gists/crim­i­nol­o­gists/econ­o­mists–as­sess­ments of Im­manuel Waller­stein in the “cen­tre-pe­riph­ery mod­el.”

Us­ing such a frame to un­der­stand the root caus­es of crime, he iden­ti­fies the dys­func­tion­al his­tor­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of world so­ci­ety in which the mil­i­tary, po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic pow­ers have used their might, greed and ide­ol­o­gy to shape the in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tion­ships be­tween and amongst coun­tries, con­ti­nents and peo­ples.

Even af­ter hun­dreds of years, the bru­tal and in some in­stances geno­ci­dal oblit­er­a­tion of peo­ples, the pil­lage of their re­sources, en­slave­ment, in­den­ture­ship, po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary con­trol of such so­ci­eties, such preda­to­ry ac­tions have not been con­ceived of as crimes.

Con­verse­ly, those ac­tions have been pro­ject­ed as dri­ve, en­ter­prise, and dy­namism right­ly utilised by mighty na­tions to crush oth­ers with­out the ca­pac­i­ty to re­spond.  

In in­stances when for po­lit­i­cal, ide­o­log­i­cal and wealth-snatch­ing rea­sons, crimes such as the slaugh­ter of a UN-es­ti­mat­ed 100,000 civil­ians in the Amer­i­can as­sault on Iraq, the geno­ci­dal con­quest of the Amerindi­an pop­u­la­tion their lands and re­sources in North and South Amer­i­ca by Eu­ro­peans, the in­va­sions, oc­cu­pa­tions, slaugh­ter and pil­lage of the peo­ple and re­sources of Chi­na, In­dia, Africa, Latin Amer­i­ca, Pales­tine have not been con­sid­ered, stud­ied and pun­ished as the most sys­tem­at­ic and hor­ren­dous crimes of Eu­ro-Amer­i­can civil­i­sa­tion.

The above acts of in­sti­tu­tion­al crime have been based on the his­tor­i­cal­ly es­tab­lished view/ide­o­log­i­cal and re­li­gious po­si­tions, that in the world pop­u­la­tion there are those who be­long as ful­ly hu­man and those on the pe­riph­ery who re­main in the wilder­ness to be ex­ploit­ed by those at the cen­tre. Such ex­ploita­tion, the view con­tends, does not amount to crime; it’s the nat­ur­al or­der or­dained by God.

The cre­ators of the New World de­ter­mined by thought and deed who were ful­ly hu­man and le­git­i­mate peo­ples and their cul­ture and who would sit on top of the pile-rank­ing of civil­i­sa­tion and who would be rel­e­gat­ed to the sta­tus orig­i­nat­ing from a crim­i­nal cul­ture.

So the con­quests of lands, peo­ples and their re­sources in the pe­riph­ery, the con­tin­u­ing ex­ploita­tion of coun­tries out­side Eu­ro-Amer­i­ca by big cap­i­tal that, in the lyrics of ca­lyp­son­ian John­ny King are not crim­i­nal­i­ty but are part of the nat­ur­al or­der of the plan­et– Na­ture’s Plan; the “hum­ble and the weak” must await restora­tion in an­oth­er world. In the present, those who rile against such a well-de­fined prin­ci­ple and set of be­hav­iours are de­fined as crim­i­nals and their be­hav­iours are pun­ished.

At its root, there­fore, crim­i­nal­i­ty is not seen in eco­nom­ic con­trol, de­pri­va­tion, or the killing of and near ex­ter­mi­na­tion of peo­ple. Such ac­tiv­i­ties are rarely the con­cern of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem; rather what is, are the ac­tions of those who en­gage in house­break­ing, lar­ce­ny, mur­ders, drug-sell­ing, kid­nap­ping, ex­tor­tion and the day-to-day run of what are cer­tain­ly crim­i­nal be­hav­iours.

Miss­ing from the un­der­stand­ing, pros­e­cu­tion and the search for so­lu­tions to crim­i­nal be­hav­iours are the analy­ses of the caus­es of such be­hav­iours, sure­ly de­rived from the orig­i­nat­ing forces of crime as list­ed above in the re­la­tions be­tween the pow­er­ful and the pow­er­less.

In­ter­na­tion­al and na­tion­al crim­i­nal­i­ty as ex­pressed in the con­tem­po­rary pe­ri­od.  

To be con­tin­ued.