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The long range planning of criminal justice systems
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Long Range Planning Vol. 12
August 1979
The Long Range Planning Criminal Justice Systems
Freedom from crime and a reasonable degree of public safety is essential to the quality of life in future human settlements. Via the United Nations 5 yearly Congresses on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, the author has been advocating the integration of long range crime prevenTion and criminal justice planning with national planning. He has also published two books on the subject. This article outlines the proposals and discusses possible scenarios and simulation models.
Introduction The current interest in the planning of better human settlements usually takes it for granted that these will be respectable, law-abiding, orderly, safe and only marginally troubled by the problems of crime. The contemporary concern with strategies to adjust (or to adjust to) total environments and the attempts to calculate the possiblelifestyles in order to determine the desirable lifestyles has for too long resisted attempts to provide in advance for ‘negative’ or disturbing types of human behaviour. Projective techniques including future scenarios have found it easier to assume that man will behave rationally or in accordance with perceived utilities despite the fact that history is replete with evidence to the contrary. This unwillingness to face crime as a. fact of life, this loathness to recognize crime control as a substantial absorber of natural and human resources, and the apparent slowness to acknowledge the capacity of crime to revolutionize any projected futures has operated at several removes in the planning process. Crime was excluded, with so many other social issues, as a problem which would be largely resolved by increased incomes in the predominantly economic yodels for development and growth which emerged in the Third World in the
1950s and 1960s. It was given no more than a nodding recognition in the regional and zonal planning of both Europe and America-and this only because of the experience of increased problems of juvenile delinquency in the new house areas which had been created to remove slums in pre-World War II years. Even then, general social and community facilities and amenities were relied upon to build the crime neutralizing sinewsand little if any attention was given to the fact of crime or to its trends in particular areas. Finally, in the more recent concern with futuristics, environments and human settlements, crime and its possible consequences rarely appear in the literature. It seems as if there is a reluctance to face the issue of crime squarely; or perhaps that there is an unwillingness to delve into the imponderables and relativities known to be connected with the concept of crime. Yet crime is by no means the only social phenomena encrusted with imponderables and relativities : it is significant, therefore, that problems of no less difflculty and which are no less unpredictable and speculative have been confronted by specialists in future building in a number of other areas (e.g. mental health and defence policy): and dealing with the complications of such phenomena has become very much an accepted part of the current practice of futuristics. The failure to deal adequately with the issues of future crime in future planning is decidedly odd in a world dramatically troubled by escalating crime, national and international; it is indeed peculiar in a world continuously threatened by the evident prospect of the emotionally unstable, the pathologically selfish or the fanatically idealistic providing the finger which pulls the nuclear trigger. And it is unmistakeably myopic and demonstrably unrealistic:
(4
in a world well prepared by Plato for the influence of ‘dronis with stings’ (i.e. criminals) on the shaping of political societies;
P4in ‘Director, Australian Institute of Criminology, lo-18 Colbee Court, Phillip, A.C.T. 2606, Australia. Formerly Director, United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programmes. Sometime United Nations Inter-regional Adviser on Social Planning.
of
an age cluttered with all the debris of the optimistic planning models shattered in the third world by such problems as unemployment, education, crime and corruption which they either failed to acknowledge or accommodate;
The Long Range Planning of Criminal Justice Systems
(4
in a generation in the ‘developed’ countries in which white collar crime, corporate crime, organized or syndicated crime, corruption, currency manipulations and the cornering of essential world supplies as well as the exploitation of our new urban inter-’ dependency have been readily available to distort the most hopeful forecasts and predictions;
(4
in a period in which Watergate or Lockheed type scandals, the extra-legal manipulations of multinational corporations and the evidence of currency dealings, international trade and prices being beyond the sovereign decisions of national governments has engendered a feeling of helplessness; and
(4
in an era of new forms of terrorism and international crime which impose economic and social burdens, not to mention political problems which can undermine administrations.
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ation more difficult) have to be compiled on past practices and they thereby tend to rigidify existing systems. Just as they can take no account of exceptional cases, the quality of mercy, (or excessive harshness) so they cannot yet allow adequately for policy revisions, particularly if these amount to fundamental changes in established principles. Moreover, in the development of computerized simulation models it has been demonstrated that, however useful they might be in showing trends by extrapolation they cannot incorporate purposes or dec!ared goals .5 Decision makers can be affected by the acceptability or otherwise of the simulated statements so that the models used have, because of their feed-back, the capacity to become self defeating or self fulfilling. They become self fulfilling when their prophecies are elements which reinforce the patterns of decision or the patterns of policy making which will ensure the forecast. They become self defeating when their simulated statements become the factors which change policies or decisions to avoid the stated outcome.
Developments So Far Fortunately, there are signs that all this may be changing. Since the Fourth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders held in Kyoto, Japan in 1970 there has been a world community call for crime prevention policies and plans to be integrated with national and regional planning. As a consequence there have been courses held in Japan and Australia and a publication of these to encourage further development. l Whether as a result of this or of independent conceptualization the Doxiadis movement for urban planning has begun to include the need for a system of ‘law and justice for all citizens’ and for ‘the safety and security of all citizens’ in its formulations.2 Finally, criminology’s own pioneer in prediction methods, systems analysis and futuristics, Professor Leslie Wilkins has sought to look into 1990 crime and to the need to up date value systems as well as to prepare for the technological impact on styles of living.3 These are beginnings; but they fall far short of the international perspectives which will be needed and, though the principles are enunciated, the tools are a long way from being developed. Society needs to devise more effective methods and more precise techniques for the planning of human settlements which will be both viable and relatively crime free. The term ‘relatively crime free’ allows for the fact that a crime-free society is an impossibility given the fact that the definition of crime is itself relative and, as Arnold Toynbee pointed out, just before his death, human society expresses its dignity (as against animal society) by its use of conventions so that no human society has been without any rules at al1,4 and rules mean deviation and therefore crime of some sort. The term ‘relatively crime free’ implies a settlement within which inhabitants can be secure in their persons and property. We are close to simulation of most if not all the decisionmaking within the criminal justice system (courts, corrections, police). The trouble is that the models which thereby greatly restrict discretion (and make discrimin-
If simulation could be used as a device deliberately to affect the policy making in the criminal justice systems, it could ft.&l a most important role in the development of criminal justice systems. In national and regional or zonal planning, it should not be difficult to make more use of simulation to extrapolate and inform planners on likely trends from existing or past data. Using this material, plans for investment in health, education, labour, welfare, police courts and corrections could be drafted and adjusted by 5-yearly revisions of the simulation to take account of the changes in trends. This presupposes however, that policy makers have already decided what is desirable or undesirable; that they have a standard against which to measure the acceptability or unacceptability of the simulator statements. Wilkins suggests that such standards should be derived from the future possibilities and prospects-not independently derived standards based on older moral dichotomies of good and bad, right and wrong, legal and illegal which at present characterize our ecclesiastical and legal establishments; and he would derive his new morality from the new attitudes of the under-30s with accommodations for a range of variety in future social behaviour which is now inadequately provided for by the law.s Variety is the spice of life however, not its staple. Indeed variety implies an underlying theme for the variety, without which total or extreme diversity approaches chaos. Rules for societies, cannot therefore be wholly tolerant without at some stage losing their significance as rules; and, without rules, man becomes less than the animals, because he, unlike them is not regulated by nature. Admitting then that there need to be changes in law to take account of the future complexities of our society, and that the whole thrust of law in the future might need to be to control modern institutions and collectivities, as much as, if not more than, individuals, it
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Long Range Planning Vol. 12
August 1979
still remains necessary to define the common denominator of behaviour which a society has to control. Limits. have to be set, boundaries drawn and acceptable or desirable behaviour specified. In very general terms this has already been done by Chris&s when he recognizes a need for the safety and security of all citizens. Obviously people seek to be free from personal attack and to be able to enjoy the rights and privileges conferred by law or status. To be more specific however the cross-cultural or comparative studies of law, both statute and customary, which have been carried out across the world combine to suggest a kernel of agreement on the kinds of behaviour which no society can tolerate and at the same time maintain itself. Very roughly this approximates to the more serious crimes in most modern penal codes such as murder, wounding, assault, theft. Obviously, as the list widens the differences assert themselves and proliferate: but, on these few major offences there would seem to be a solid core of agreement world wide. If we now look at the crimes which are giving most cause of concern in those countries where crime is rising we find that they usually fall into this category; there is in fact a decreasing concern with moral offences, victimless crime, shoplifting, or even minor larceny; and a correspondingly increasing concern with murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, mugging and rape. Less precise but no less general is the widespread concern with corporate crime and pollution, racial discrimination and corruption.
possible effect of future crime on the planning process itself. It would be unrealistic to imagine that planning to prevent crime will take place in a vacuum. Vested interests and the possibility of powerful private organizations affecting the legislative process are always risks to which a planner or a planning group is exposed. Every investment, every decision on the allocations of resources is likely to be vulnerable to diversion or distortion by interests which may well be or may soon become criminal in the sense that they will menace the security or safety of the population. Even the formulators of projective techniques and models can be influenced by special interest groups and it cannot be assumed that any part of the planning process is beyond the scope of criminal infiltration-using the word criminal in a wider anti-social sense. At one level there will be the grosser criminal diversions of funds into pockets for which they were never intended-or there may be direct bribery; at more sophisticated levels there will be the permeation of ideas intended to deflect the planning to favour some groups more than others. None of these eventualities are beyond the scope of accountability within the writing of future scenariosand the necessary prophylactics can be incorporated in the development of plans. Similar built-in provisions for anticipated counter-attack are normal ingredients of defence planning, just as economic models can be drawn to take account of a variety of possible reactions to decision making.
The Range The Prospects
and Objectives
In planning for future crime prevention therefore the perspectives could be focussed upon (a) the need for control of institutions or collectivities which may well have the power to affect the safety and security of citizens, (b) the need to prevent corruption in public offices and private business, (c) the need for new concerns with pollution and discrimination and (d) the short list of serious offences which no society can readily permit if it is concerned with the security and safety of its people. For, with all the technological changes, revolutions in lifestyles, switches from the power of material possessions to the power of information in the future, it is still evident that personal ruthlessness and selfish types of negative behaviour will persist. Given the relativity of the concept of crime as it is widened it would be difficult to go much beyond this; but these limits are certainly not too restrictive for the development of an explicit policy-to be amended and adjusted in accordance with the trends revealed by intelligent prognosis. If then the general aims, i.e. the desirable objectives, were to be defined in terms of reducing the costs and damage of crime and providing security for all this would permit the accommodation of variables as well as constants. We might be approaching diversity but not without some unity.
Feed Back and Diversion As shown, however, it is essential to take account of the
of Choice
When future scenarios are drawn they should reflect philosophies and lifestyles offering contrasts between permissive and restrictive criminal policies. What hap pens if we cannot control the misuse of drugs? What happens if we try to control-how do we do it, at what stages and by what means? What happens if cities can be held to ransom by nuclear armed terrorists? What happens if countries outlaw terrorism as they have outlawed piracy? Allowing for the fact that criminal justice systems have not been particularly successful in controlling crime, what other forms of control will be more successful-political, cultural, economic? Again it is necessary for the formulations of future possibilities and probabilities to take account of an increasingly litigious population served by an ever expanding flow of lawyers. The court system could begin to absorb increasing proportions of national resources. If the time now spent on every case prosecuted by the police were to be trebled or quadrupled to allow for a full and careful study of human rights and their possible infringement in each case, what would be the cost and the consequences for the criminal justice system? Possible futures written in this style are likely to rely more on the system and on the institutions than on individual responsibility. This has two possible consequences for the writing of scenarios and for the invention of projective techniques. On the one hand it can be exnected that the forms of crime will flow from the systems and institutions more than ever before. Such
The Long Range Planning of Criminal Justice Systems crime might be initiated by the individuals somewhere in the system: but the responsibility is likely to be so diffused that it will require a recasting of legislation and law enforcement to take account of the collective effects of the future changes. Penalties will need to be rethought and deterrent action reformulated for collectivities rather than individuals might be restored to respectability. It is likely that the victims will be numerous so that the compensation of all those affected by crime might discourage anyone likely to trigger a chain reaction of automatic effects. Taking equipment or resources out of productive use for specified periodsin much the same way as a driver’s licence can be suspended-could well provide a disincentive to some forms of systematic or institutional crime. The second consequence may well be the disappearance or diminution of mens rea or the guilty mind in legal drafting. It could be that the action or omission constituting an offence will be dealt with by future criminal justice systems without regard to intentions; but, in that case, the rights of people may well be affected since rights and obligations go together. It is apposite that the quality of life in the future human settlements will depend greatly upon the quality of justice. The justice administered by the courts is a part of justice in general which includes social justice, which in turn encompasses commutative justice (in transactions or relationships) and distributivejustice (between ruler and ruled). Justice derives from the human need to survive and develop-and to help everyone else to survive and develop-not only to enjoy rights but to ‘respect the rights of others; in this sense every person has a claim on every other person. Future prospects will therefore differ to the extent that justice reigns in the new human settlements. The future scenarios will be affected in two ways; first to the extent that justice in all the above senses is recognized and administered; secondly to the extent that it is practised by the community generally. It should not be too difficult to forecast, (using the trends available) the possible societies likely to emerge: if all acquisitive and competitive characteristics are maintained with the consequent disregard for a neighbour’s rights, needs and expectations; if there are informal but effective community controls born of a consensus of mutual respect for each other’s needs, rights and expectations; and if the law has to be used to develop a balance between (a) and (b). It would be useful to attempt a costing exercise, even if this could only be in terms of proportions, to show the impact upon the different kinds of criminal justice services. t In this concern for justice the inequalities or present biases of existing systems will need to be studied. Sometimes this has been done in such a way as to expose discrimination only. The assumption has been
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that some new order would relieve the pressure.on the underprivileged or fringe communities. But every system known, has been and is subject to unfairness towards those without power and influence. This applies in communist as well as capitalist societies. If this is likely to be a constant, greater equality might be sought by reducing the immunities of the privileged rather than concentrating attention on the unlikely prospect of immunities for all.
Provision
for Values
.
As Wilkins has shown, and as Lord Denning has claimed, the law is really a matter of morals fed through politics. In developing future projections and scenarios therefore it is essential to take some account of the present and probable future states of morals and religion. This ‘philosophical’ climate for each scenario will to some extent determine the recourse to law to regulate behaviour. It may show different uses of social controls. On the one hand formal or organized religion appears to be declining; but interest in religious movements, meditation and the supernatural appears to be increasing. Just as an older morality in the law is gradually being replaced by a newer morality (e.g. homosexuality, prostitution, vagrancy and drunkenness are being decriminalized but racial or sex discrimination, environmental pollution and white collar crime are being criminalized) so in probable futures the law may be invoked to deal with situations considered unacceptable-although ethics or morality may never be mentioned as such. In regional and zonal planning, particularly the extent to which many of the present day offences are likely to be tolerated and people are expected to provide for their own security will affect both business methods and design. The use of public places and streets after dark will be related to conceptions of the degree of safety and prevention techniques. In this the role of the news media will be paramount; indeed the situation will be radically altered according to whether the media is used positively to support crime prevention campaigns and to make crime reprehensible-or to chase news or drama regardless of the public effect. Building types, school curricula and health and social welfare provisions will have effects upon the use of police, courts and prisons. And the increasing recourse in the past quarter of a century to private security forces could reflect an increasing concern with self help which will affect future systems. At the national level the conceptions of social danger will be instrumental in determining policy and programmes. Here the law and order approach may well be contrasted with the broader socially preventative attitudes. Either way the future projections will probably need to allow for a continuation of the variety and disagreements on the nature ofjustice and its application. A consensus of opinion on basic values is likely to be as crime preventative as it will be difficult to attain. Therefore in the provision for future crime control it will be necessary to allow for those radical groups convinced
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Long
Range
Planning
that the only way to obtain truction of the existing order.
Vol. 12 improvement
August
1979
is by des-
Intema tionalism Nor will it be realistic to construct models which omit the international dimension. It would have been difficult only a few years ago to forecast the growth of present day attitudes to the limits of growth, the shift of economic and political emphasis to the third world or the polarization of groups of nations which is becoming increasingly evident with regional alliances and treaties of mutual support. Crime is also international even in its national perspectives-it follows closely the trends of world media coverage and even local criminal events may have world significance. When they are concerned with drugs, terrorism, evasions of exchange controls or corporate crime. Conversely, the crises of variety with no consensus on justice are localized on the international canvas. They are more Western than Eastern, more Northern than Southern. This is not explained simply along a time curve of economic development because of the feed back already provided by international media coverage and recent extensions of international travel and the flow of Western youth to gather Oriental wisdom. The experience of Japan in decreasing crime during a period of intense urbanization and industrialization and even reducing its road death toll. as the number of cars has risen, is a factor which cannot be excluded if all the elements are to be gathered for feeding into the models which it is hoped to build for crime prevention.
The Scenarios (a) With Desirable Objectives Determined It might be most helpful to begin a review of possible scenarios with desirable models. It has already been suggested that simulation could be useful but that policy-makers have not usually decided what is desirable or not. This is not always true because there are some societies already ideologically committed. Since the fascist ideal is not too relevant and the communist ideal is one which is still cherished both inside and outside the communist countries it may be as well to begin with this Marxist utopia. We know that. according: to the theorv. the dialectical process is inevitably diGted by an approaching perfection which eventuallv makes a state organization unnecessary. Though no; specifically detailed it would appear that this ultimate communist state would be a relatively crimeless society. It would be without crime because it would be without reasons for crime. And such irrational deviants as remained would be controlled by social pressures without the need for force or legal restraint. A highly developed, industrial, technological, scientific society inhabited by a highly educated altruistic people
would thereby have achieved all the simplicity of the least politically organized social groupings known to the chiefless societies. These are small anthropologistsgroups of people without political organization except perhaps the modicum of formal order developed within an extended family. There is little division of labour, and property, in so far as it exists, it is shared, so that income and distribution are equalized and all adults (though there may be sexual distinctions) are equal and free within the group. They are held together more by mutual obligations than rights but rights are respected via the observance of duties: but the state as such does not appear because it is not needed.
Man has no experience of such a possible society made up of more than a few hundred people. Assuming that it is really possible, then its inter-related perfection precludes any concern which such a human settlement would have with crime-or for that matter with any of the other political, social and economic problems which have beset us throughout history. We note this in passing. The question of whether it is a probable scenario or no more than a desirable dream, of earthly perfection need not detain us. Our scenario to have any relevance for crime has to be shorter term therefore and it must be concerned with the period when such problems still subsist and the State organization is needed to deal with it. This is the period which communist literature calls ‘socialist’-the period between the revolution and perfection when the State machinery is still required. By definition in such a ‘socialist’ state the methods for dealing with crime will be political, economic and social as well as legal or physical. We already have considerable experience of some such ‘socialist’ societies in practice: and this lends itself to extrapolation into a future scenario. The whole ‘socialist’ society with its many human settlements will be structured to induce maximum conformity to the principles considered necessary in pursuit of the desired perfection. Variety will persist but it will be minimal since, again by definition, deviation of any kind will be undesirable and criminal to a greater or lesser degree. Education, health services and economic life will be geared to reward conformity and to punish nonconformity. Everyone will be consciously pressured to adopt and pursue the desired ends as these are interpreted at the national and local.levels. Presumably the measure of success will be the extent to which political, social and economic structures achieve the desired conformity without the intervention of the public security or law enforcement machinery. Neighbourhood, street, courtyard, factory or school committees will exist to induce the desired behaviour : and whilst in the first generation it may be necessary for the ruling proletariat to use the cruder implements of coerced conformity for those who do not fit the required pattern, succeeding generations will have less need for such direct state persuasion because they will have been conditioned by their upbringing within a system where the desired ends are shared and instilled by every aspect of the process of development from the cradle to the grave.
The Long Range Planning of Criminal Justice Systems In such scenarios we observe that there is no danger of crime or indeed any other social problems being overlooked in the total planning process. Police, courts and correctional services will not be enforcing an impartial law-they will be integral parts of the total national effort inducing and sometimes driving the country to move in the required direction. Every citizen will have a duty to participate in the law enforcement, i.e. the national development process. Questions of liberty and human right will be interpreted as desirable via the progress towards social improvement. An individual will enjoy these in the group, as benefits flowing from his progress in conformity, rather than as means by which he might assert an independence from the total national effort. For to espouse different ends would be a deviation from the norm and therefore a proper subject for discouragement politically, economically or socially. In such a society familiar problems would be eliminated by definition. For example, unemployment could not exist where labour is directed to work at whatever wage rates the society could afford. Social problems would become educational or health problems; for the deviant or non-conformist would be either sick, and therefore in need of treatment, or ignorant, and therefore in need of education. Finally, it should be noted that the deliberate and directive planning of all aspects of political, economic and social life is only an aid-the accelerator of a process which is believed to be quite inevitable anyway. Future scenarios are not so much a range of possibilities as a reading of inevitable future change in different probable forms, but probabilities are restricted by the pattern of ideological determinism. In such a context of totalitarianism the scenarios to be drawn would consist of extrapolations of knowledge about technical, industrial or scientific improvements and how these could be fitted into the more effective pursuit of the desirable ends. The scenarios would be forecasts of possible means to achieve the ends more rapidly. They may compare different possible situations according to assumed differences of external and internal pressures. They might compare different levels of possible achievement in progress towards the ends, i.e. more or less education, more or less health, or possible levels of welfare or law enforcement. But, with objectives unchangeable in the long run, the short run targets would be selected from a continuum towards the given long term objectives. Obviously such scenarios will be easier to construct since the desirable patterns are already determined. However, if past experience is any guide, it would seem that even such a preordained, predetermined, totally planned process of social, economic and political growth follows no uniformally smooth path. Not only are there likely to be counter-revolutions which become ‘criminal’ as they attempt to interfere with the flow of inevitability but there are problems of corruption, alcoholism, hooliganism. Crime as recognized elsewhere-murders, rapes, serious assaults, appear to occur even amongst the faithful and the elite, quite apart from the philosophical or cultural deviations which occur from
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time to time. Realistic scenarios even in totally planned societies with ideological motivation will then allow for these as possible disturbances of the total intended pattern. Presumably such scenarios are already a part of the total planning of the ‘socialist’ societies which already exist. (b) Extremes of Permissiveness and Order The ‘liberty vs order’ debate is never really solved in societies which are not totalitarian. Moreover the problems of scenario drafting become formidable indeed when we leave the imposed limits of such ideological systems as we have considered so far. For now, the desirable ends are not so clear. Not everyone accepts them: not everyone is obliged or conditioned to accept them, so that the attempt has to be made to provide for greater variety and for a mixture of conformity and non-conformity. Differences arise not only about the ends but also about the means which can be justifiably adopted to achieve such ends. There are no given directions, no immutable or inevitable principles. It is no longer a case of forecasting the achievements and shortfalls likely to occur scientifically, technologically, socially, etc., along a preordained route. The different directions which such changes may take in the absence of comprehensive, long term, agreed objectives, have to be taken into account. Here a beginning can be made by contemplating the possible extremes of permissiveness and order and the state of affairs to which they would seem to lead. Imagining first the possibility of a totally permissive society it seems that total chaos would be avoided by the assumption of authority by those strong enough to assert their wills over others. The only other prospect is the perfect liberty which would be ensured by total freedom for all under all circumstances: but this presupposes a kind of self-balancing act which has not been evident in any society to date and which implies constraints of some kinds, even if self-imposed. How this could preclude the ruthless or selflsh using their liberty for the achievement of power over others has never been clear. It would be more reasonable as a forecast to postulate a totally permissive society as being visited with unbridled crime-not crime of the politically motivated labelling by law for this would be defined out of existence-but crime of the type occasioned when violence is the instrument of self-seeking. Plato provides the most plausible outcome of such a chaotic condition. The ones now best able to impose authority will be those who are strongest, least principled and utterly inconsiderate of others in their satisfaction of their own requirements. Many of these would be criminal by any definition and it is these who would rise to the top. These would transform society as they, by force, bent others to their will and their objectives would be simple-maintaining themselves in power and extending their authority. Resistance on the way may give rise to wars but these would still end with the enthronement of people in power who might well have all the antisocial attributes we usually regard as criminal. Supposing
the so-called criminals are now in power
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Long Range Planning Vol. 12
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with all the resources of modern science and technology at their disposal they can proceed to exploit unconscionably until the permissiveness still extant leads to their overthrow by deviants (i.e. opponents they have not curbed). Ultimately, rulers will emerge however, who can use all the power at our disposal to subjugate opposition. They will indoctrinate, bribe, condition and subdue with force whenever necessary all those who do not obey their will unquestioningly. In-other words they don the mantle of totalitarianism, defining crime in their own terms, becoming their own absolute authority and establishing their desirable goals as the only ones permissible. This could be naked repression by force with people systematically drugged or psychologically conditioned from birth into habits of obedience. But more than likely the former so-called criminals will now have blossomed into political leaders with ideological objectives (even if these are still crude and amount to no more than aims to preserve and perpetuate their dynasties). However, unreal this may seem, with all the behavioural modifiers and all available resources at their disposal, and with a will to destroy those who oppose, it is feasible for such rulers to create loyal generations dedicated to their service and willing to sacrifice themselves for the maintenance of the leadership. We have historical examples of this being done with far less controls than are available today. It now emerges that the opposite scenario-that of order at any price-is merely a development of total permissiveness. For order as the supreme good would mean criminals being unable to over-run and achieve power because they are kept in check by an increasing recourse to law enforcement. With order preferred to anything else we may assume that this will be more and more restrictively defined by those in power so that deviation of any kind will be tolerated less and less. If at first the only desirable objective is order, then as deviation is crushed and as education, health, law enforcement, technology and science are mobilized to discourage variety, the desirable ends will be those defined by the rulers. We may expect an eventual ideological justification for this which again brings us into the totalitarian situation already examined with its facility for perpetuating itself over future generations. If these suppositions have any validity, then the ultimates of liberty (permissiv.eness) and order (forced conformity) are totally planned totalitarian patterns of society. Democracy presupposes a balance of liberty and order: liberty to be defined as being limited by the rights of others and order being defined as restricted to the imposition of those limitations which make liberty real and enjoyable by all. It is at this point that scenarios become more difficult to write simply because the defined desirable objectives have disappeared. Democracy must mean the protection of dissent. The drawing of the line between protection and repression has never been unanimously applauded so that democracy again by definition nurtures its own opposition. Once it cannot do that it loses the right to claim the title of democracy.
(c) Scenarios Without Desired Objectives
As long as democracies mean rights for all in theory, to be enjoyed in practice by an elite then it is possible to preserve a balance. For between the divergent groups in the elite there is general agreement on the limits of deviation. Disagreements are tolerated only to the point where they begin to rock the national boat as this is conceived by the elite. The modern dilemma derives from the fact that, for the first time in the history of democracy it is being applied to masses of people, a majority of whom are educated to understand their rights and to prosecute them unlimitedly. Deviations are likely not only to abound but to be able to defend their rights against the majority conforming. The variety is likely to be so great that a single authority cannot deal with it unless it begins to assume the power which would destroy its democratic content. After all the democracies of classical times were practised in small cities many of which were no more than a couple of square miles: everyone knew everyone else and the settlements would be more like large villages in modern terms. And Western democracies have been elites held together by uniform values derived from a JudaeoChristian culture now very much diluted. The desired ends of modern mass democracies are rarely clear and always interpretable in different ways by groups within society. There can be no surprise that the capitalist objective of maximizing profit gained ascendancy as religious belief declined. There was really nothing else. In the last century and a half, this has been diluted to mean a higher GNP for the purpose of improving all incomes and generalizing the distribution of benefits. Poverty has certainly not been eliminated but more than at any time in their history some nationalities have enjoyed mass affluence. Crime has thrived in such an atmosphere partly because the self-seeking, whether individual or collective has generated short cuts of an illegal nature and partly because wealth once obtained has brought power and influence with few questions asked as to how the wealth was initially obtained. Temptation and opportunity have grown in influence and extent. Corruption, corporate crime, syndicated crime adopting the methods of the board room and violence in frustration have all stoked the fires of crime. Thousands of individuals and groups have been exploited and dispossessed as the drive for national gain and affluence has gathered momentum. Disillusion and frustration has been intensified by films and modern advertisements extolling the virtues of wealth for its own sake. Development and crime have been venerable bedfellows with lines sometimes difficult to draw between them. But in all the plans and models for future growth, development has been drawn in only two dimensions, the shadow of crime never being allowed to show the third dimension of its reality. It is for such reasons that law enforcement agencies have been criticised because they have been able to deal with only small segments of total illegality. So, material gain, whether personal or national, has been displaced as a desirable end by the concern for the quality of life, the environment or social justice. Yet
The Long Range Planning of Criminal Justice Systems unemployment and inflation have kept alive the need to serve the mammon of productivity for the sake of generating wealth. Modern democratic society is therefore torn between desirable ends which may be contradictory when theory has to be put into practice. Social justice. is reconcilable with low income levels, protection of the environment with reduced benefits for a present generation-for the sake of a future populution. Scenarios can still be drawn for the future but they have to be short term rather than long term and more numerous because of the need to show the choices which have to be made by those who cannot plan as simple mindedly as can the totalitarian systems. Moreover crime has to be shown as a phenomena in each scenario with the consequences of its different possible levels of toleration or control for the other aspects of political, economic and social life. Such work could be simplified by the introduction of principles of an ethical nature but these principles in a modern democracy are never likely to be exclusive of dissent-or else like the ‘quality of life’ or ‘social justice’ they are in danger of being so variously interpreted that they become quite meaningless. All this means that the possible scenarios have to define in advance the objectives they serve. Ethically neutral choices will hardly be possible if crime is to be taken into account because the behaviour to be labelled ‘crime’ and to be treated in the scenarios will be identified only by what is to be considered legally right and wrong and this in turn will be a question of values. This suggests therefore that alternative scenarios will be required to trace the future effects of such ethical alternatives. But such varieties of choice for behaviour to be labelled legal or illegal would also extend to political economic and social behaviour. The issue of crime is not to be confined to murder, rape, robbery and theft: it extends to the legality (an d/ or d esirability) of particular types of economic structure with their differential effects on different groups in the community. It extends to the dividing line between fraud and sharp practice in business. It includes the likely economic consequence of decriminating drug abuse as much as the likely investments on police, courts and corrections which will flow from policy decisions which will instigate demonstrations or other forms of protest with possible criminal by-products. It embraces the issues of providing institutional care for delinquent juveniles at high cost or a greater toleration and reliance upon community services of a non-institutional type. It certainly incorporates the broader question of the decisions made for community involvement in the toleration and control of crime as against greater investments in formal security and law enforcement. It extends to the economic effects viz population and health, of decisions on the permissible degrees of genetic experimentation and human tissue transplants. What is to be regarded as crime and the measures by which it will be discouraged and controlled is as much an economic question as it is political and social. It lends itself to tentative costing and can be included in scenarios. If all this seems di&ult it may be remembered that the absence of uniform values and declared agreed objectives
49
creates problems not only in the area of crime and its control. It creates problems socially when the extent of the permissible use of tranquilizing drugs might affect the investment needed in future mental hospitals. It makes it very difficult to decide a question of permissible population growth and the extent to which the concern with the environment will be allowed to change the shape of future investment on the development of alternative sources of energy. And if the law is to be used to determine these latter questions then its enforcement implications bring crime and its control back into any scenario which has to be drawn.
Conclusions It is clear that futurology
and long term planning for different possible situations have, as yet, given future crime and its prevention less attention than it deserves.
In all this concern with crime in planning however, it is necessary to reiterate the essential fact and the contention of this paper -namely that in any future human settlements crime will be as relative and as much a part of the total political, economic and social patterns of living as it is today. This does not disqualify it from inclusion any more than the relativities of other political, economic or social phenomena permits their exclusion from the attempts to plan for future communities. Relative or not, crime is not only a fact of social existence but a determinable feature which has to be accommodated. There is a need to include crime because of its powerful effect on other events and because of the size and scope of the investment in criminal justice services which is always needed to contain deviant behaviour. This is a transfer of resources too substantial to be treated as if it did not happen at all. It is a cost which cannot be ignored if only because it has a disturbing habit of affecting all other costs and benefits.
Notes (1) W. Clifford, Crime Prevention Plenning. D.C. Heath, Lexington Books, Lexington, Boston (1976).
(2) See C. A. Doxiadis, Action for Human Settlements: Ekistics, and Problems and Science of Human Settlements. 40 (241). 440-448, December (1975); and Alexander N. Christakis Toward a Symbiotic Appreciation of the Morphology of Human Settlements: Ekistics. the Problems and Science of Human Settlements, 40 (241). 449-463, December (1975). (3)
Leslie T. Wilkins, Crime in the World of 1990: 203-214 September (1970).
in Futures. pp.
(4)
Arnold J. Toynbee and Daisaku Ikeda, The Toynbee-fkeda Dialogue, Kodansha International Ltd., Tokyo, New York and San Francisco (1975).
(5)
See P. F. Chapman, A Method for exploring the future. Long Range Planning, 9 (1). 2-11 (1976). In which Chapman referred to criticism of the systems dynamics models; D. M. Meadows, D. L. Meadows, J. Flanders and W. W. Behrens, Ill. The Limits to Growth, Universe Books, N.Y. and Earth Island,
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Long Range Planning Vol. 12
August 1979
London (1972) ; and M. Mesarovic and E. Peske, Mankind at the Turning Point, Hutchinson. London (1975) ; and of the econometric models; E. A. Hudson and D. W. Jorgenson, U.S. Energy Policy and Economic Growth 1975-2000, Bell J. Econ. Manag. Sci., 5 (2). 461-515 (1974) ; R. H. Berdeck, The state
of the art-long range economic and manpower forecasting, Long Range Planning, 8 (1). 31-42 (1975), and a special issue of Energy Policy, IPC Press (1974). (6)
Op. cit.. p. 209
Long Range Planning Vol. 12
August 1979
The Long Range Planning Criminal Justice Systems
Freedom from crime and a reasonable degree of public safety is essential to the quality of life in future human settlements. Via the United Nations 5 yearly Congresses on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, the author has been advocating the integration of long range crime prevenTion and criminal justice planning with national planning. He has also published two books on the subject. This article outlines the proposals and discusses possible scenarios and simulation models.
Introduction The current interest in the planning of better human settlements usually takes it for granted that these will be respectable, law-abiding, orderly, safe and only marginally troubled by the problems of crime. The contemporary concern with strategies to adjust (or to adjust to) total environments and the attempts to calculate the possiblelifestyles in order to determine the desirable lifestyles has for too long resisted attempts to provide in advance for ‘negative’ or disturbing types of human behaviour. Projective techniques including future scenarios have found it easier to assume that man will behave rationally or in accordance with perceived utilities despite the fact that history is replete with evidence to the contrary. This unwillingness to face crime as a. fact of life, this loathness to recognize crime control as a substantial absorber of natural and human resources, and the apparent slowness to acknowledge the capacity of crime to revolutionize any projected futures has operated at several removes in the planning process. Crime was excluded, with so many other social issues, as a problem which would be largely resolved by increased incomes in the predominantly economic yodels for development and growth which emerged in the Third World in the
1950s and 1960s. It was given no more than a nodding recognition in the regional and zonal planning of both Europe and America-and this only because of the experience of increased problems of juvenile delinquency in the new house areas which had been created to remove slums in pre-World War II years. Even then, general social and community facilities and amenities were relied upon to build the crime neutralizing sinewsand little if any attention was given to the fact of crime or to its trends in particular areas. Finally, in the more recent concern with futuristics, environments and human settlements, crime and its possible consequences rarely appear in the literature. It seems as if there is a reluctance to face the issue of crime squarely; or perhaps that there is an unwillingness to delve into the imponderables and relativities known to be connected with the concept of crime. Yet crime is by no means the only social phenomena encrusted with imponderables and relativities : it is significant, therefore, that problems of no less difflculty and which are no less unpredictable and speculative have been confronted by specialists in future building in a number of other areas (e.g. mental health and defence policy): and dealing with the complications of such phenomena has become very much an accepted part of the current practice of futuristics. The failure to deal adequately with the issues of future crime in future planning is decidedly odd in a world dramatically troubled by escalating crime, national and international; it is indeed peculiar in a world continuously threatened by the evident prospect of the emotionally unstable, the pathologically selfish or the fanatically idealistic providing the finger which pulls the nuclear trigger. And it is unmistakeably myopic and demonstrably unrealistic:
(4
in a world well prepared by Plato for the influence of ‘dronis with stings’ (i.e. criminals) on the shaping of political societies;
P4in ‘Director, Australian Institute of Criminology, lo-18 Colbee Court, Phillip, A.C.T. 2606, Australia. Formerly Director, United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programmes. Sometime United Nations Inter-regional Adviser on Social Planning.
of
an age cluttered with all the debris of the optimistic planning models shattered in the third world by such problems as unemployment, education, crime and corruption which they either failed to acknowledge or accommodate;
The Long Range Planning of Criminal Justice Systems
(4
in a generation in the ‘developed’ countries in which white collar crime, corporate crime, organized or syndicated crime, corruption, currency manipulations and the cornering of essential world supplies as well as the exploitation of our new urban inter-’ dependency have been readily available to distort the most hopeful forecasts and predictions;
(4
in a period in which Watergate or Lockheed type scandals, the extra-legal manipulations of multinational corporations and the evidence of currency dealings, international trade and prices being beyond the sovereign decisions of national governments has engendered a feeling of helplessness; and
(4
in an era of new forms of terrorism and international crime which impose economic and social burdens, not to mention political problems which can undermine administrations.
43
ation more difficult) have to be compiled on past practices and they thereby tend to rigidify existing systems. Just as they can take no account of exceptional cases, the quality of mercy, (or excessive harshness) so they cannot yet allow adequately for policy revisions, particularly if these amount to fundamental changes in established principles. Moreover, in the development of computerized simulation models it has been demonstrated that, however useful they might be in showing trends by extrapolation they cannot incorporate purposes or dec!ared goals .5 Decision makers can be affected by the acceptability or otherwise of the simulated statements so that the models used have, because of their feed-back, the capacity to become self defeating or self fulfilling. They become self fulfilling when their prophecies are elements which reinforce the patterns of decision or the patterns of policy making which will ensure the forecast. They become self defeating when their simulated statements become the factors which change policies or decisions to avoid the stated outcome.
Developments So Far Fortunately, there are signs that all this may be changing. Since the Fourth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders held in Kyoto, Japan in 1970 there has been a world community call for crime prevention policies and plans to be integrated with national and regional planning. As a consequence there have been courses held in Japan and Australia and a publication of these to encourage further development. l Whether as a result of this or of independent conceptualization the Doxiadis movement for urban planning has begun to include the need for a system of ‘law and justice for all citizens’ and for ‘the safety and security of all citizens’ in its formulations.2 Finally, criminology’s own pioneer in prediction methods, systems analysis and futuristics, Professor Leslie Wilkins has sought to look into 1990 crime and to the need to up date value systems as well as to prepare for the technological impact on styles of living.3 These are beginnings; but they fall far short of the international perspectives which will be needed and, though the principles are enunciated, the tools are a long way from being developed. Society needs to devise more effective methods and more precise techniques for the planning of human settlements which will be both viable and relatively crime free. The term ‘relatively crime free’ allows for the fact that a crime-free society is an impossibility given the fact that the definition of crime is itself relative and, as Arnold Toynbee pointed out, just before his death, human society expresses its dignity (as against animal society) by its use of conventions so that no human society has been without any rules at al1,4 and rules mean deviation and therefore crime of some sort. The term ‘relatively crime free’ implies a settlement within which inhabitants can be secure in their persons and property. We are close to simulation of most if not all the decisionmaking within the criminal justice system (courts, corrections, police). The trouble is that the models which thereby greatly restrict discretion (and make discrimin-
If simulation could be used as a device deliberately to affect the policy making in the criminal justice systems, it could ft.&l a most important role in the development of criminal justice systems. In national and regional or zonal planning, it should not be difficult to make more use of simulation to extrapolate and inform planners on likely trends from existing or past data. Using this material, plans for investment in health, education, labour, welfare, police courts and corrections could be drafted and adjusted by 5-yearly revisions of the simulation to take account of the changes in trends. This presupposes however, that policy makers have already decided what is desirable or undesirable; that they have a standard against which to measure the acceptability or unacceptability of the simulator statements. Wilkins suggests that such standards should be derived from the future possibilities and prospects-not independently derived standards based on older moral dichotomies of good and bad, right and wrong, legal and illegal which at present characterize our ecclesiastical and legal establishments; and he would derive his new morality from the new attitudes of the under-30s with accommodations for a range of variety in future social behaviour which is now inadequately provided for by the law.s Variety is the spice of life however, not its staple. Indeed variety implies an underlying theme for the variety, without which total or extreme diversity approaches chaos. Rules for societies, cannot therefore be wholly tolerant without at some stage losing their significance as rules; and, without rules, man becomes less than the animals, because he, unlike them is not regulated by nature. Admitting then that there need to be changes in law to take account of the future complexities of our society, and that the whole thrust of law in the future might need to be to control modern institutions and collectivities, as much as, if not more than, individuals, it
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Long Range Planning Vol. 12
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still remains necessary to define the common denominator of behaviour which a society has to control. Limits. have to be set, boundaries drawn and acceptable or desirable behaviour specified. In very general terms this has already been done by Chris&s when he recognizes a need for the safety and security of all citizens. Obviously people seek to be free from personal attack and to be able to enjoy the rights and privileges conferred by law or status. To be more specific however the cross-cultural or comparative studies of law, both statute and customary, which have been carried out across the world combine to suggest a kernel of agreement on the kinds of behaviour which no society can tolerate and at the same time maintain itself. Very roughly this approximates to the more serious crimes in most modern penal codes such as murder, wounding, assault, theft. Obviously, as the list widens the differences assert themselves and proliferate: but, on these few major offences there would seem to be a solid core of agreement world wide. If we now look at the crimes which are giving most cause of concern in those countries where crime is rising we find that they usually fall into this category; there is in fact a decreasing concern with moral offences, victimless crime, shoplifting, or even minor larceny; and a correspondingly increasing concern with murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, mugging and rape. Less precise but no less general is the widespread concern with corporate crime and pollution, racial discrimination and corruption.
possible effect of future crime on the planning process itself. It would be unrealistic to imagine that planning to prevent crime will take place in a vacuum. Vested interests and the possibility of powerful private organizations affecting the legislative process are always risks to which a planner or a planning group is exposed. Every investment, every decision on the allocations of resources is likely to be vulnerable to diversion or distortion by interests which may well be or may soon become criminal in the sense that they will menace the security or safety of the population. Even the formulators of projective techniques and models can be influenced by special interest groups and it cannot be assumed that any part of the planning process is beyond the scope of criminal infiltration-using the word criminal in a wider anti-social sense. At one level there will be the grosser criminal diversions of funds into pockets for which they were never intended-or there may be direct bribery; at more sophisticated levels there will be the permeation of ideas intended to deflect the planning to favour some groups more than others. None of these eventualities are beyond the scope of accountability within the writing of future scenariosand the necessary prophylactics can be incorporated in the development of plans. Similar built-in provisions for anticipated counter-attack are normal ingredients of defence planning, just as economic models can be drawn to take account of a variety of possible reactions to decision making.
The Range The Prospects
and Objectives
In planning for future crime prevention therefore the perspectives could be focussed upon (a) the need for control of institutions or collectivities which may well have the power to affect the safety and security of citizens, (b) the need to prevent corruption in public offices and private business, (c) the need for new concerns with pollution and discrimination and (d) the short list of serious offences which no society can readily permit if it is concerned with the security and safety of its people. For, with all the technological changes, revolutions in lifestyles, switches from the power of material possessions to the power of information in the future, it is still evident that personal ruthlessness and selfish types of negative behaviour will persist. Given the relativity of the concept of crime as it is widened it would be difficult to go much beyond this; but these limits are certainly not too restrictive for the development of an explicit policy-to be amended and adjusted in accordance with the trends revealed by intelligent prognosis. If then the general aims, i.e. the desirable objectives, were to be defined in terms of reducing the costs and damage of crime and providing security for all this would permit the accommodation of variables as well as constants. We might be approaching diversity but not without some unity.
Feed Back and Diversion As shown, however, it is essential to take account of the
of Choice
When future scenarios are drawn they should reflect philosophies and lifestyles offering contrasts between permissive and restrictive criminal policies. What hap pens if we cannot control the misuse of drugs? What happens if we try to control-how do we do it, at what stages and by what means? What happens if cities can be held to ransom by nuclear armed terrorists? What happens if countries outlaw terrorism as they have outlawed piracy? Allowing for the fact that criminal justice systems have not been particularly successful in controlling crime, what other forms of control will be more successful-political, cultural, economic? Again it is necessary for the formulations of future possibilities and probabilities to take account of an increasingly litigious population served by an ever expanding flow of lawyers. The court system could begin to absorb increasing proportions of national resources. If the time now spent on every case prosecuted by the police were to be trebled or quadrupled to allow for a full and careful study of human rights and their possible infringement in each case, what would be the cost and the consequences for the criminal justice system? Possible futures written in this style are likely to rely more on the system and on the institutions than on individual responsibility. This has two possible consequences for the writing of scenarios and for the invention of projective techniques. On the one hand it can be exnected that the forms of crime will flow from the systems and institutions more than ever before. Such
The Long Range Planning of Criminal Justice Systems crime might be initiated by the individuals somewhere in the system: but the responsibility is likely to be so diffused that it will require a recasting of legislation and law enforcement to take account of the collective effects of the future changes. Penalties will need to be rethought and deterrent action reformulated for collectivities rather than individuals might be restored to respectability. It is likely that the victims will be numerous so that the compensation of all those affected by crime might discourage anyone likely to trigger a chain reaction of automatic effects. Taking equipment or resources out of productive use for specified periodsin much the same way as a driver’s licence can be suspended-could well provide a disincentive to some forms of systematic or institutional crime. The second consequence may well be the disappearance or diminution of mens rea or the guilty mind in legal drafting. It could be that the action or omission constituting an offence will be dealt with by future criminal justice systems without regard to intentions; but, in that case, the rights of people may well be affected since rights and obligations go together. It is apposite that the quality of life in the future human settlements will depend greatly upon the quality of justice. The justice administered by the courts is a part of justice in general which includes social justice, which in turn encompasses commutative justice (in transactions or relationships) and distributivejustice (between ruler and ruled). Justice derives from the human need to survive and develop-and to help everyone else to survive and develop-not only to enjoy rights but to ‘respect the rights of others; in this sense every person has a claim on every other person. Future prospects will therefore differ to the extent that justice reigns in the new human settlements. The future scenarios will be affected in two ways; first to the extent that justice in all the above senses is recognized and administered; secondly to the extent that it is practised by the community generally. It should not be too difficult to forecast, (using the trends available) the possible societies likely to emerge: if all acquisitive and competitive characteristics are maintained with the consequent disregard for a neighbour’s rights, needs and expectations; if there are informal but effective community controls born of a consensus of mutual respect for each other’s needs, rights and expectations; and if the law has to be used to develop a balance between (a) and (b). It would be useful to attempt a costing exercise, even if this could only be in terms of proportions, to show the impact upon the different kinds of criminal justice services. t In this concern for justice the inequalities or present biases of existing systems will need to be studied. Sometimes this has been done in such a way as to expose discrimination only. The assumption has been
45
that some new order would relieve the pressure.on the underprivileged or fringe communities. But every system known, has been and is subject to unfairness towards those without power and influence. This applies in communist as well as capitalist societies. If this is likely to be a constant, greater equality might be sought by reducing the immunities of the privileged rather than concentrating attention on the unlikely prospect of immunities for all.
Provision
for Values
.
As Wilkins has shown, and as Lord Denning has claimed, the law is really a matter of morals fed through politics. In developing future projections and scenarios therefore it is essential to take some account of the present and probable future states of morals and religion. This ‘philosophical’ climate for each scenario will to some extent determine the recourse to law to regulate behaviour. It may show different uses of social controls. On the one hand formal or organized religion appears to be declining; but interest in religious movements, meditation and the supernatural appears to be increasing. Just as an older morality in the law is gradually being replaced by a newer morality (e.g. homosexuality, prostitution, vagrancy and drunkenness are being decriminalized but racial or sex discrimination, environmental pollution and white collar crime are being criminalized) so in probable futures the law may be invoked to deal with situations considered unacceptable-although ethics or morality may never be mentioned as such. In regional and zonal planning, particularly the extent to which many of the present day offences are likely to be tolerated and people are expected to provide for their own security will affect both business methods and design. The use of public places and streets after dark will be related to conceptions of the degree of safety and prevention techniques. In this the role of the news media will be paramount; indeed the situation will be radically altered according to whether the media is used positively to support crime prevention campaigns and to make crime reprehensible-or to chase news or drama regardless of the public effect. Building types, school curricula and health and social welfare provisions will have effects upon the use of police, courts and prisons. And the increasing recourse in the past quarter of a century to private security forces could reflect an increasing concern with self help which will affect future systems. At the national level the conceptions of social danger will be instrumental in determining policy and programmes. Here the law and order approach may well be contrasted with the broader socially preventative attitudes. Either way the future projections will probably need to allow for a continuation of the variety and disagreements on the nature ofjustice and its application. A consensus of opinion on basic values is likely to be as crime preventative as it will be difficult to attain. Therefore in the provision for future crime control it will be necessary to allow for those radical groups convinced
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Long
Range
Planning
that the only way to obtain truction of the existing order.
Vol. 12 improvement
August
1979
is by des-
Intema tionalism Nor will it be realistic to construct models which omit the international dimension. It would have been difficult only a few years ago to forecast the growth of present day attitudes to the limits of growth, the shift of economic and political emphasis to the third world or the polarization of groups of nations which is becoming increasingly evident with regional alliances and treaties of mutual support. Crime is also international even in its national perspectives-it follows closely the trends of world media coverage and even local criminal events may have world significance. When they are concerned with drugs, terrorism, evasions of exchange controls or corporate crime. Conversely, the crises of variety with no consensus on justice are localized on the international canvas. They are more Western than Eastern, more Northern than Southern. This is not explained simply along a time curve of economic development because of the feed back already provided by international media coverage and recent extensions of international travel and the flow of Western youth to gather Oriental wisdom. The experience of Japan in decreasing crime during a period of intense urbanization and industrialization and even reducing its road death toll. as the number of cars has risen, is a factor which cannot be excluded if all the elements are to be gathered for feeding into the models which it is hoped to build for crime prevention.
The Scenarios (a) With Desirable Objectives Determined It might be most helpful to begin a review of possible scenarios with desirable models. It has already been suggested that simulation could be useful but that policy-makers have not usually decided what is desirable or not. This is not always true because there are some societies already ideologically committed. Since the fascist ideal is not too relevant and the communist ideal is one which is still cherished both inside and outside the communist countries it may be as well to begin with this Marxist utopia. We know that. according: to the theorv. the dialectical process is inevitably diGted by an approaching perfection which eventuallv makes a state organization unnecessary. Though no; specifically detailed it would appear that this ultimate communist state would be a relatively crimeless society. It would be without crime because it would be without reasons for crime. And such irrational deviants as remained would be controlled by social pressures without the need for force or legal restraint. A highly developed, industrial, technological, scientific society inhabited by a highly educated altruistic people
would thereby have achieved all the simplicity of the least politically organized social groupings known to the chiefless societies. These are small anthropologistsgroups of people without political organization except perhaps the modicum of formal order developed within an extended family. There is little division of labour, and property, in so far as it exists, it is shared, so that income and distribution are equalized and all adults (though there may be sexual distinctions) are equal and free within the group. They are held together more by mutual obligations than rights but rights are respected via the observance of duties: but the state as such does not appear because it is not needed.
Man has no experience of such a possible society made up of more than a few hundred people. Assuming that it is really possible, then its inter-related perfection precludes any concern which such a human settlement would have with crime-or for that matter with any of the other political, social and economic problems which have beset us throughout history. We note this in passing. The question of whether it is a probable scenario or no more than a desirable dream, of earthly perfection need not detain us. Our scenario to have any relevance for crime has to be shorter term therefore and it must be concerned with the period when such problems still subsist and the State organization is needed to deal with it. This is the period which communist literature calls ‘socialist’-the period between the revolution and perfection when the State machinery is still required. By definition in such a ‘socialist’ state the methods for dealing with crime will be political, economic and social as well as legal or physical. We already have considerable experience of some such ‘socialist’ societies in practice: and this lends itself to extrapolation into a future scenario. The whole ‘socialist’ society with its many human settlements will be structured to induce maximum conformity to the principles considered necessary in pursuit of the desired perfection. Variety will persist but it will be minimal since, again by definition, deviation of any kind will be undesirable and criminal to a greater or lesser degree. Education, health services and economic life will be geared to reward conformity and to punish nonconformity. Everyone will be consciously pressured to adopt and pursue the desired ends as these are interpreted at the national and local.levels. Presumably the measure of success will be the extent to which political, social and economic structures achieve the desired conformity without the intervention of the public security or law enforcement machinery. Neighbourhood, street, courtyard, factory or school committees will exist to induce the desired behaviour : and whilst in the first generation it may be necessary for the ruling proletariat to use the cruder implements of coerced conformity for those who do not fit the required pattern, succeeding generations will have less need for such direct state persuasion because they will have been conditioned by their upbringing within a system where the desired ends are shared and instilled by every aspect of the process of development from the cradle to the grave.
The Long Range Planning of Criminal Justice Systems In such scenarios we observe that there is no danger of crime or indeed any other social problems being overlooked in the total planning process. Police, courts and correctional services will not be enforcing an impartial law-they will be integral parts of the total national effort inducing and sometimes driving the country to move in the required direction. Every citizen will have a duty to participate in the law enforcement, i.e. the national development process. Questions of liberty and human right will be interpreted as desirable via the progress towards social improvement. An individual will enjoy these in the group, as benefits flowing from his progress in conformity, rather than as means by which he might assert an independence from the total national effort. For to espouse different ends would be a deviation from the norm and therefore a proper subject for discouragement politically, economically or socially. In such a society familiar problems would be eliminated by definition. For example, unemployment could not exist where labour is directed to work at whatever wage rates the society could afford. Social problems would become educational or health problems; for the deviant or non-conformist would be either sick, and therefore in need of treatment, or ignorant, and therefore in need of education. Finally, it should be noted that the deliberate and directive planning of all aspects of political, economic and social life is only an aid-the accelerator of a process which is believed to be quite inevitable anyway. Future scenarios are not so much a range of possibilities as a reading of inevitable future change in different probable forms, but probabilities are restricted by the pattern of ideological determinism. In such a context of totalitarianism the scenarios to be drawn would consist of extrapolations of knowledge about technical, industrial or scientific improvements and how these could be fitted into the more effective pursuit of the desirable ends. The scenarios would be forecasts of possible means to achieve the ends more rapidly. They may compare different possible situations according to assumed differences of external and internal pressures. They might compare different levels of possible achievement in progress towards the ends, i.e. more or less education, more or less health, or possible levels of welfare or law enforcement. But, with objectives unchangeable in the long run, the short run targets would be selected from a continuum towards the given long term objectives. Obviously such scenarios will be easier to construct since the desirable patterns are already determined. However, if past experience is any guide, it would seem that even such a preordained, predetermined, totally planned process of social, economic and political growth follows no uniformally smooth path. Not only are there likely to be counter-revolutions which become ‘criminal’ as they attempt to interfere with the flow of inevitability but there are problems of corruption, alcoholism, hooliganism. Crime as recognized elsewhere-murders, rapes, serious assaults, appear to occur even amongst the faithful and the elite, quite apart from the philosophical or cultural deviations which occur from
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time to time. Realistic scenarios even in totally planned societies with ideological motivation will then allow for these as possible disturbances of the total intended pattern. Presumably such scenarios are already a part of the total planning of the ‘socialist’ societies which already exist. (b) Extremes of Permissiveness and Order The ‘liberty vs order’ debate is never really solved in societies which are not totalitarian. Moreover the problems of scenario drafting become formidable indeed when we leave the imposed limits of such ideological systems as we have considered so far. For now, the desirable ends are not so clear. Not everyone accepts them: not everyone is obliged or conditioned to accept them, so that the attempt has to be made to provide for greater variety and for a mixture of conformity and non-conformity. Differences arise not only about the ends but also about the means which can be justifiably adopted to achieve such ends. There are no given directions, no immutable or inevitable principles. It is no longer a case of forecasting the achievements and shortfalls likely to occur scientifically, technologically, socially, etc., along a preordained route. The different directions which such changes may take in the absence of comprehensive, long term, agreed objectives, have to be taken into account. Here a beginning can be made by contemplating the possible extremes of permissiveness and order and the state of affairs to which they would seem to lead. Imagining first the possibility of a totally permissive society it seems that total chaos would be avoided by the assumption of authority by those strong enough to assert their wills over others. The only other prospect is the perfect liberty which would be ensured by total freedom for all under all circumstances: but this presupposes a kind of self-balancing act which has not been evident in any society to date and which implies constraints of some kinds, even if self-imposed. How this could preclude the ruthless or selflsh using their liberty for the achievement of power over others has never been clear. It would be more reasonable as a forecast to postulate a totally permissive society as being visited with unbridled crime-not crime of the politically motivated labelling by law for this would be defined out of existence-but crime of the type occasioned when violence is the instrument of self-seeking. Plato provides the most plausible outcome of such a chaotic condition. The ones now best able to impose authority will be those who are strongest, least principled and utterly inconsiderate of others in their satisfaction of their own requirements. Many of these would be criminal by any definition and it is these who would rise to the top. These would transform society as they, by force, bent others to their will and their objectives would be simple-maintaining themselves in power and extending their authority. Resistance on the way may give rise to wars but these would still end with the enthronement of people in power who might well have all the antisocial attributes we usually regard as criminal. Supposing
the so-called criminals are now in power
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with all the resources of modern science and technology at their disposal they can proceed to exploit unconscionably until the permissiveness still extant leads to their overthrow by deviants (i.e. opponents they have not curbed). Ultimately, rulers will emerge however, who can use all the power at our disposal to subjugate opposition. They will indoctrinate, bribe, condition and subdue with force whenever necessary all those who do not obey their will unquestioningly. In-other words they don the mantle of totalitarianism, defining crime in their own terms, becoming their own absolute authority and establishing their desirable goals as the only ones permissible. This could be naked repression by force with people systematically drugged or psychologically conditioned from birth into habits of obedience. But more than likely the former so-called criminals will now have blossomed into political leaders with ideological objectives (even if these are still crude and amount to no more than aims to preserve and perpetuate their dynasties). However, unreal this may seem, with all the behavioural modifiers and all available resources at their disposal, and with a will to destroy those who oppose, it is feasible for such rulers to create loyal generations dedicated to their service and willing to sacrifice themselves for the maintenance of the leadership. We have historical examples of this being done with far less controls than are available today. It now emerges that the opposite scenario-that of order at any price-is merely a development of total permissiveness. For order as the supreme good would mean criminals being unable to over-run and achieve power because they are kept in check by an increasing recourse to law enforcement. With order preferred to anything else we may assume that this will be more and more restrictively defined by those in power so that deviation of any kind will be tolerated less and less. If at first the only desirable objective is order, then as deviation is crushed and as education, health, law enforcement, technology and science are mobilized to discourage variety, the desirable ends will be those defined by the rulers. We may expect an eventual ideological justification for this which again brings us into the totalitarian situation already examined with its facility for perpetuating itself over future generations. If these suppositions have any validity, then the ultimates of liberty (permissiv.eness) and order (forced conformity) are totally planned totalitarian patterns of society. Democracy presupposes a balance of liberty and order: liberty to be defined as being limited by the rights of others and order being defined as restricted to the imposition of those limitations which make liberty real and enjoyable by all. It is at this point that scenarios become more difficult to write simply because the defined desirable objectives have disappeared. Democracy must mean the protection of dissent. The drawing of the line between protection and repression has never been unanimously applauded so that democracy again by definition nurtures its own opposition. Once it cannot do that it loses the right to claim the title of democracy.
(c) Scenarios Without Desired Objectives
As long as democracies mean rights for all in theory, to be enjoyed in practice by an elite then it is possible to preserve a balance. For between the divergent groups in the elite there is general agreement on the limits of deviation. Disagreements are tolerated only to the point where they begin to rock the national boat as this is conceived by the elite. The modern dilemma derives from the fact that, for the first time in the history of democracy it is being applied to masses of people, a majority of whom are educated to understand their rights and to prosecute them unlimitedly. Deviations are likely not only to abound but to be able to defend their rights against the majority conforming. The variety is likely to be so great that a single authority cannot deal with it unless it begins to assume the power which would destroy its democratic content. After all the democracies of classical times were practised in small cities many of which were no more than a couple of square miles: everyone knew everyone else and the settlements would be more like large villages in modern terms. And Western democracies have been elites held together by uniform values derived from a JudaeoChristian culture now very much diluted. The desired ends of modern mass democracies are rarely clear and always interpretable in different ways by groups within society. There can be no surprise that the capitalist objective of maximizing profit gained ascendancy as religious belief declined. There was really nothing else. In the last century and a half, this has been diluted to mean a higher GNP for the purpose of improving all incomes and generalizing the distribution of benefits. Poverty has certainly not been eliminated but more than at any time in their history some nationalities have enjoyed mass affluence. Crime has thrived in such an atmosphere partly because the self-seeking, whether individual or collective has generated short cuts of an illegal nature and partly because wealth once obtained has brought power and influence with few questions asked as to how the wealth was initially obtained. Temptation and opportunity have grown in influence and extent. Corruption, corporate crime, syndicated crime adopting the methods of the board room and violence in frustration have all stoked the fires of crime. Thousands of individuals and groups have been exploited and dispossessed as the drive for national gain and affluence has gathered momentum. Disillusion and frustration has been intensified by films and modern advertisements extolling the virtues of wealth for its own sake. Development and crime have been venerable bedfellows with lines sometimes difficult to draw between them. But in all the plans and models for future growth, development has been drawn in only two dimensions, the shadow of crime never being allowed to show the third dimension of its reality. It is for such reasons that law enforcement agencies have been criticised because they have been able to deal with only small segments of total illegality. So, material gain, whether personal or national, has been displaced as a desirable end by the concern for the quality of life, the environment or social justice. Yet
The Long Range Planning of Criminal Justice Systems unemployment and inflation have kept alive the need to serve the mammon of productivity for the sake of generating wealth. Modern democratic society is therefore torn between desirable ends which may be contradictory when theory has to be put into practice. Social justice. is reconcilable with low income levels, protection of the environment with reduced benefits for a present generation-for the sake of a future populution. Scenarios can still be drawn for the future but they have to be short term rather than long term and more numerous because of the need to show the choices which have to be made by those who cannot plan as simple mindedly as can the totalitarian systems. Moreover crime has to be shown as a phenomena in each scenario with the consequences of its different possible levels of toleration or control for the other aspects of political, economic and social life. Such work could be simplified by the introduction of principles of an ethical nature but these principles in a modern democracy are never likely to be exclusive of dissent-or else like the ‘quality of life’ or ‘social justice’ they are in danger of being so variously interpreted that they become quite meaningless. All this means that the possible scenarios have to define in advance the objectives they serve. Ethically neutral choices will hardly be possible if crime is to be taken into account because the behaviour to be labelled ‘crime’ and to be treated in the scenarios will be identified only by what is to be considered legally right and wrong and this in turn will be a question of values. This suggests therefore that alternative scenarios will be required to trace the future effects of such ethical alternatives. But such varieties of choice for behaviour to be labelled legal or illegal would also extend to political economic and social behaviour. The issue of crime is not to be confined to murder, rape, robbery and theft: it extends to the legality (an d/ or d esirability) of particular types of economic structure with their differential effects on different groups in the community. It extends to the dividing line between fraud and sharp practice in business. It includes the likely economic consequence of decriminating drug abuse as much as the likely investments on police, courts and corrections which will flow from policy decisions which will instigate demonstrations or other forms of protest with possible criminal by-products. It embraces the issues of providing institutional care for delinquent juveniles at high cost or a greater toleration and reliance upon community services of a non-institutional type. It certainly incorporates the broader question of the decisions made for community involvement in the toleration and control of crime as against greater investments in formal security and law enforcement. It extends to the economic effects viz population and health, of decisions on the permissible degrees of genetic experimentation and human tissue transplants. What is to be regarded as crime and the measures by which it will be discouraged and controlled is as much an economic question as it is political and social. It lends itself to tentative costing and can be included in scenarios. If all this seems di&ult it may be remembered that the absence of uniform values and declared agreed objectives
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creates problems not only in the area of crime and its control. It creates problems socially when the extent of the permissible use of tranquilizing drugs might affect the investment needed in future mental hospitals. It makes it very difficult to decide a question of permissible population growth and the extent to which the concern with the environment will be allowed to change the shape of future investment on the development of alternative sources of energy. And if the law is to be used to determine these latter questions then its enforcement implications bring crime and its control back into any scenario which has to be drawn.
Conclusions It is clear that futurology
and long term planning for different possible situations have, as yet, given future crime and its prevention less attention than it deserves.
In all this concern with crime in planning however, it is necessary to reiterate the essential fact and the contention of this paper -namely that in any future human settlements crime will be as relative and as much a part of the total political, economic and social patterns of living as it is today. This does not disqualify it from inclusion any more than the relativities of other political, economic or social phenomena permits their exclusion from the attempts to plan for future communities. Relative or not, crime is not only a fact of social existence but a determinable feature which has to be accommodated. There is a need to include crime because of its powerful effect on other events and because of the size and scope of the investment in criminal justice services which is always needed to contain deviant behaviour. This is a transfer of resources too substantial to be treated as if it did not happen at all. It is a cost which cannot be ignored if only because it has a disturbing habit of affecting all other costs and benefits.
Notes (1) W. Clifford, Crime Prevention Plenning. D.C. Heath, Lexington Books, Lexington, Boston (1976).
(2) See C. A. Doxiadis, Action for Human Settlements: Ekistics, and Problems and Science of Human Settlements. 40 (241). 440-448, December (1975); and Alexander N. Christakis Toward a Symbiotic Appreciation of the Morphology of Human Settlements: Ekistics. the Problems and Science of Human Settlements, 40 (241). 449-463, December (1975). (3)
Leslie T. Wilkins, Crime in the World of 1990: 203-214 September (1970).
in Futures. pp.
(4)
Arnold J. Toynbee and Daisaku Ikeda, The Toynbee-fkeda Dialogue, Kodansha International Ltd., Tokyo, New York and San Francisco (1975).
(5)
See P. F. Chapman, A Method for exploring the future. Long Range Planning, 9 (1). 2-11 (1976). In which Chapman referred to criticism of the systems dynamics models; D. M. Meadows, D. L. Meadows, J. Flanders and W. W. Behrens, Ill. The Limits to Growth, Universe Books, N.Y. and Earth Island,
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London (1972) ; and M. Mesarovic and E. Peske, Mankind at the Turning Point, Hutchinson. London (1975) ; and of the econometric models; E. A. Hudson and D. W. Jorgenson, U.S. Energy Policy and Economic Growth 1975-2000, Bell J. Econ. Manag. Sci., 5 (2). 461-515 (1974) ; R. H. Berdeck, The state
of the art-long range economic and manpower forecasting, Long Range Planning, 8 (1). 31-42 (1975), and a special issue of Energy Policy, IPC Press (1974). (6)
Op. cit.. p. 209